7-Eleven petroleum stations & convenience stores upgrade to US LED interior recessed lighting to showcase their inventory in a new light and save more on the bottom line for years to come.
The Opportunity
According to the NACS, over 153,000 convenience stores are operating within the United States with roughly 122,000 that sell motor fuels too. That makes for a truly competitive landscape for multi-location operators across the country to maintain typically thin profit margins. 7-Eleven, the country’s largest convenience store chain, is always looking for opportunities to enhance the shopping experience and increase their bottom line.
So it was no surprise that part of that process was setting goals to improve the existing lighting and increase energy-efficiency for their stores. Many of the original fluorescent strip fixtures had suffered from degraded performance or had completely malfunctioned, leading to unpredictable maintenance headaches. Most importantly, light levels were inconsistent, or non-existent, as the fixtures approached the end of their life. The 7-Eleven team turned to US LED to update the existing systems with economical, long-life LED lighting for the improved performance and energy savings they were looking for.
The US LED interior lighting upgrade helped establish a safe, comfortable environment for consumers and helped improve productivity for all 7-Eleven employees.
The Solution
With multiple locations of various sizes and layouts to consider, the lighting experts at US LED developed a plan in collaboration with 7-Eleven’s facilities team to upgrade 4,760 locations to new LED lighting. US LED’s project management team provided a single point of contact to oversee the project and schedule crews to complete the locations quickly and efficiently. Throughout all the stores, the interior fixtures utilizing inefficient fluorescent tubes would be replaced with US LED’s L-Grid®2EH medium flux recessed troffers. This ultra-efficient recessed troffer provides appealing, glare-free illumination while reducing energy consumption drastically. Not only did each location benefit from higher CRI illumination, they were able to reduce the total number of luminaires being installed and still maintain excellent light levels.
The Benefits
The 7-Eleven locations that received the full lighting upgrade are benefiting from improved visibility and a greater sense of safety from the increased light levels. With the confidence of having LED lighting expected to last 200,000 hours and be backed by a 10 year warranty, 7-Eleven can look forward to keeping employees more productive instead of managing maintenance issues. More customers are being attracted to the store and are enjoying the inviting atmosphere. Instead of getting lost in the dark, the new lighting makes store merchandise and displays pop more than ever before. On average, the new US LED lighting solutions will reduce energy consumption for each location by 32,750 kwh annually. Combined, the average annual energy and maintenance savings for each location will be $3,210 with a simple payback in a little over a year (based on average 24-hour burn per day at 10¢/kWh). In the end, the total lighting energy and maintenance savings for all 7-Eleven locations is $15.3 million per year.