“Customers get excited—they don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t grab the rebates.”

So says Andy Cooper, who works in project development for Johnson Melloh Solutions—an Indianapolis mechanical engineering firm dedicated to energy efficiency. Cooper performs energy audits, and so he’s showing customers every day how they can save money and energy.

Naturally, he’s a Trade Ally. Cooper connects his customers to POWER MOVES incentives by showing them exactly how they’ll save and the rebates that make those deals even sweeter.

“One big misconception is that you’re going to have lower light levels when you switch to high-efficiency lighting,” he said. “And that’s just not the case. I show them the calculations. I show them the light levels.”

In the case of one common project—switching out gymnasium lighting in schools from 400-watt metal halides to six-lamp T8 fixtures—“It’s easy to figure out the kilowatt hours saved, and because a 400-watt metal halide actually burns 455 watts, you get a lot of savings by changing to the T8, which uses 230 watts. Throw in the rebate, and it’s usually less than a five-year payback.”

Andy gets the sale, schools get the savings, and everybody sees the light—or the basketball game, as the case may be.

Showing customers that the rebates exist is usually enough to steer them toward products that qualify, and so Andy calls the program “a very handy selling tool”—one he makes even more appealing by handling himself, filling out the paperwork and overseeing the process for his customers.

“It’s a pretty simple process overall,” he said. “I say, ‘Here’s the amount of savings you can expect to see, and here’s a check you can expect from POWER MOVES.’ People don’t usually turn that down.”