Case Study — Commercial / Sports

Quincy Youth Hockey — National Grid LED Retrofit

54% energy reduction. $11,000 annual savings. $21,693 utility incentive. 1.5-year payback — a textbook National Grid-backed commercial LED retrofit.

The Challenge

Ice Rink Lighting That Cost Too Much to Run

Quincy Youth Arena operates ice rink lighting for hundreds of hours per month across youth hockey, public skating, and adult league sessions. The facility’s existing metal halide and HID system drew substantial power, suffered from notoriously slow restrike times, and required a roster of replacement bulbs and ballasts that compounded operational cost year over year.

The arena’s management team had identified lighting as the single largest controllable operating expense, and the National Grid commercial efficiency program offered substantial rebate incentives for qualifying LED retrofits — if the deployment could meet rebate qualification criteria and document expected savings.

The Solution

High-Output LED Retrofit Built for Hockey Lighting

Clear-Vu Lighting designed and deployed a high-output LED retrofit purpose-engineered for ice rink lighting — addressing the unique requirements of vertical illuminance for puck tracking, camera-friendly color rendering for live broadcasts, and instant-on capability that eliminated metal halide warm-up time.

The deployment was structured from the outset to qualify for National Grid’s commercial LED rebate program. Pre-installation audit documentation, post-installation kWh verification, and lifetime savings calculations were prepared to the utility’s technical standard — capturing the maximum available incentive.

High-output LED fixtures designed for ice rink vertical illuminance and broadcast camera color rendering
54% reduction in annual lighting energy consumption versus the prior metal halide baseline
$11,000 in direct annual utility cost savings on a single facility retrofit
$21,693 in National Grid commercial LED rebate captured at installation
1.5-year simple payback — one of the strongest economic profiles available in commercial lighting
Instant-on capability eliminated metal halide restrike delays between sessions

“We knew lighting was our biggest controllable cost — we just didn’t expect the payback to land inside two years. Between the energy savings and the National Grid incentive, this was the easiest capital decision we’ve made in a decade.”
— Arena Operations Lead, Quincy Youth Arena

The Results

A 1.5-Year Payback and Better Hockey Lighting

The retrofit delivered 54% energy reduction and $11,000 in annual utility savings on day one. Combined with the $21,693 National Grid rebate captured at installation, the project produced a simple payback period of approximately 1.5 years — an economic profile that converts most facility operators into LED retrofit advocates the moment the first post-installation bill arrives.

Beyond the economics, instant-on LED eliminated the operational drag of metal halide restrike between sessions, and the improved color rendering raised the lighting quality bar for both league play and youth hockey broadcasts.

54%

Energy Reduction

$11K

Annual Savings

$21,693

National Grid Rebate

1.5 yr

Simple Payback

Instant

On (vs. HID)

Lamar LED

Architectural LED Fixtures

High-output, broadcast-ready LED lighting engineered for ice rinks, sports facilities, and large-volume commercial spaces with vertical illuminance requirements.

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