K-VA-T Upgrades Case Lighting

ABINGDON, Va. — K-VA-T Food Stores, which operates 104 supermarket Food City operates outlets in southeast Kentucky, southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee, recently upgraded from fluorescent lighting fixtures to an LED lighting system in vertical refrigerated and frozen cases across 89 stores.

The Immersion RV40 LED lighting, from GE Lighting, East Cleveland, will result in a more than $300,000 drop in annual case lighting costs, based on an electricity rate of 11 cents per kilowatt hour and having the case lights on eighteen hours each day, according to GE Lighting.

More Food City news: Food City to Renovate Wal-Mart Site

Maintenance savings are also expected with the new lighting. “The biggest expense was not replacement lamps and ballasts, but sending contractors to the stores to begin with,” said Keith Norton, director of engineering for Food City, in a statement. “Preventative maintenance measures were costing Food City more than $5 per door per year, or $37,000 annually.”

The new lighting also improves the visual presentation of products, said GE Lighting.