West Bend Air

In February 2015, a lighting distribution salesman visited West Bend Air, a small airport that offers air charter, flight training, aircraft rental and aircraft maintenance service in West Bend. When the salesman noticed the outdated lighting at the small business, he mentioned the Focus on Energy Small Business Program.

"My wife worked at the manufacturing firm that produces the lighting for this particular distributor and sent them our way,” said Peter Hupfer with West Bend Air. “We were looking to upgrade our lighting and had also heard rave reviews about the Small Business Program from another small business in the area who recently had updated lighting installed.”

West Bend Air had outdated and inefficient lighting. “The lighting was from the 1970’s,” said Hupfer. “It was ancient and prehistoric. We had poor lighting at best.”

The small business knew it was time to address their lighting situation, and after hearing about the Small Business Program from two different sources, they decided to move forward.

The lighting distribution salesman put West Bend Air in contact with a local Focus on Energy Small Business Program Trade Ally to update their lighting. The Trade Ally, Senergy Green Technologies, of West Bend installed a number of energy and cost-saving measures to West Bend Air’s office building and aircraft building, including replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs, replacing incandescent exit signs with LED exit signs, replacing T12 lamps with T8 lamps, and adding occupancy sensors.

Senergy Green Technologies was exceptionally cordial, according to Hupfer. “They were easy to work with, worked seamlessly around areas where airplanes were receiving maintenance and didn’t slow down our operation at all,” said Hupfer.

“The new lighting is bright, efficient and has made our jobs here so much easier, because we can finally see,” said Hupfer. “The updated lighting is two to three times the quality, brightness and reflectiveness of our lighting before. It is just phenomenal. We were getting by with the old lighting, but come cloudy and rain days; it was a dungeon in our buildings.”

The Focus on Energy Small Business Program was a win-win for West Bend Air.

“We win because we have updated lighting and the cost involved was minimal,” said Hupfer.  “Maybe we were just in the dark ages too long here.  It’s amazing what modern day lighting can do. More businesses should take advantage of the program.”