Background: The New Castle Regional Office (NCRO) is Delmarva Power’s largest office within the New Castle Region. At approximately 345,000 square feet of office space, the building houses over 630 employees and covers more than 70 acres. Additionally, as of 2021, Delmarva has approximately 67 named substations in its Delaware service area, providing power to approximately 320,000 customers over approximately 2,000 square miles. As a result of the large service territory and the remote nature of some of the substations, outdoor lighting is extremely important to safety and security for those substations.
Action: Delmarva Power will upgrade lighting systems at the NCRO complex from incandescent to light emitting diode (LED) to improve efficiency and create cost savings and will continue to capture all lighting upgrade opportunities at Delmarva-owned facilities during facility refresh projects. Additionally, the company has begun an LED replacement program across all its substations, beginning with some of the larger ones in the service territory. This program will not only increase the safety and security for those areas, but LED lights are also more efficient than conventional lighting equipment. Several lighting upgrade projects have taken place to date within Delmarva Power, including the Red Lion substation in Delaware.
Greenhouse Gas Impact: Replacing a conventional incandescent light with a high efficiency LED is estimated to reduce energy use by about 30%. For example, the substation upgrades, when complete, are expected to save approximately 500 MWh of electricity and eliminate about 400,000 pounds of CO2 emissions each year.