LaPine Project — Burnham Flower Insurance Group, Kalamazoo, MI

Out of all of the Consumers Energy rebate projects completed throughout the entire year, this award goes to the Consumers Energy Trade Ally that most effectively utilizes the CE rebate program and available rebate measures to develop and execute the project in the Small Commercial category that creates the comparably largest impact in energy savings and system improvement.

LaPine Project Energy Savings and ROI: After the first 8 months, this 23,000 square foot facility nominally saved $15,000 on their Consumers Energy bills, which totaled over $20,000 when taking cooling and heating degree days given the colder winter and hotter summer that we had since the year previous. This saved the owners roughly $25,000 in the first year of operation.  That’s over $1.00/sq ft of savings realized every year after the project! After the considerable energy rebate from Consumers Energy, Burnham and Flower had the project paid for in 18–20 months.