Timken Museum of Art

Project Overview

The Timken Museum of Art project was a utility program funded lighting and controls retrofit of the iconic Balboa Park Museum that not only improved the overall focal lighting pallet, but also cut operating costs drastically. Through the sophisticated lighting control system linked with the HVAC Controls (provided by Jackson & Blanc), The Timken is in process of setting up Automated Demand Response with the local utility and is now able to offer lending museums “report cards” which detail exact site conditions and allows curatorial staff to make informed decisions of artifact cycle scheduling.

Project Highlights:

• Lighting quality dramatically improved
• Lighting and control gentler on artifacts
• Lighting control facilitates exhibit cycles
• 77,500+kWh of usage reduced annually
• Equal to a 39kW (1550sq ft) solar system
• Offsets 50 metric tons of CO2 annually
• Equal to 10 homes annual electrical use
• Equal to 1938 trees ability to process CO2
• 7,750+kWh of HVAC cooling offset annually

Museum of Photographic Arts

Project Overview

In a multi-phase approach over four years, Absolutely Electric Inc. has helped guide MOPA through energy efficient lighting and controls retrofits to the point where all the MOPA Theatre (with CSR Theatrical Design), Galleries, and as of 2015 (in concert with Gensler San Diego and Johnson & Jennings) the retail, entry, and new gallery spaces now offer low cost to operate sophisticated artifact viewing and event lighting sources and controls. MOPA lighting controls, designed and built by Absolutely Electric Inc., fully complied with California Title 24 2013 (implemented in 2014) Standards as early as 2011.

Project Highlights:

• Lighting sources gentler to artifacts
• Lighting control facilitates events
• Lighting control facilitates exhibit cycles
• 64,250+kWh of usage reduced annually
• Equal to a 32kW(2,500sq ft) solar system
• Offsets 43 metric tons of CO2 annually
• Equal to 8 homes annual electrical use
• Equal to 1,606 trees ability to process CO2
• 6,400+kWh of HVAC cooling offset annually

San Diego History Center

Project Overview

In 2011, Absolutely Electric Inc., in cooperation with Balboa Park Cultural Partnership and Balboa Art Conservation Center designed and built Balboa Park’s first all LED museum gallery retrofit. AE and BACC fully explored implications of what was then a new lighting source and through research and development ended up with a lighting and controls strategy that has since been shared with other museum professionals at multiple museum conferences.

Learn more about this project from a case study produced by Sylvania

Project Highlights:

• Lighting quality dramatically improved
• Lighting sources gentler on artifacts
• Lighting control facilitates exhibit cycles
• 70,000+kWh of usage reduced annually
• Equal to a 35kW (3000sg ft) solar system
• Offsets 44 metric tons of CO2 annually
• Equal to 9 homes? annual electrical use
• Equal to 1,760 trees? ability to process CO2
• 7,000+kWh of HVAC cooling offset annually

Casa de Balboa

Project Overview

Through three phases (and counting) of design build lighting and controls solutions, Absolutely Electric, Inc. has helped the Casa de Balboa building in San Diego’s Balboa park leverage third party funding opportunities to arrive at a streamlined, modern, code compliant update to a historic San Diego classic.

Project Highlights:

• Lighting quality dramatically improved
• Lighting control mitigates 24 hour operations and allows lamp lifespan scheduling
• 143,840+kWh of usage reduced annually
• Equal to a 72kW (6,220sq ft) solar system
• Offsets 92 metric tons of CO2 annually
• Equal to 18 homes? annual electrical use
• Equal to 3,596 trees? ability to process CO2
• 14,400+kWh of HVAC cooling offset annually