The Future Looks Bright at Westside Toyota

Joining a nationwide trend that is seeing a huge return on investment in swapping out obsolete facility lighting for energy-saving LED lighting, Westside Toyota has realized a wealth of benefits in several areas of it’s North Olmsted, Ohio car dealership.

The large dealership – complete with a beautiful new-car showroom, impressive outdoor sales lot, a service center that offers maintenance on any car make or model, and a seemingly endless parts warehouse – recently teamed up with Harrington Electric through a partnership with TCP Lighting to design, update and install new lighting throughout the facility.

The multi-phase project, led by Chris Carlson, director of Harrington Electric’s SmartLite division, began in the dealership’s detail shop. There, the Harrington team of Carlson, Darrin Gaking and Ron Thacker developed a lighting solution that actually eliminated nearly 30 separate lighting fixtures while greatly improving the shop’s lighting with high-efficient LED lights.

“The lighting quality in the detail shop virtually eliminates any shadowing on the vehicles that the employees are working on, so they can see every aspect of a car’s surface,” Carlson explained. “The new lighting really helps make those cars pop.”

Phase two of the project involved Westside Toyota’s service center, where the SmartLite team installed LED lights and added 12 fixtures to provide improved lighting over the various mechanics bays.

“The re-designed lighting layout offers brighter illumination over the engine area of the vehicles being worked on,” said Carlson. “And, interestingly, the LED lights offer improved lighting for mechanics working on the underside of the vehicles, as the brighter light reflects directly off the floor. They don’t even have to use the hand-held shop lights anymore.”

Still in the works at Westside Toyota is retrofitting the large parts warehouse and the various common areas and restrooms inside the showroom. The team is also installing new power distribution to the many hydraulic lifts and tire repair equipment in the mechanic’s area.

Additionally, the Harrington team is currently developing solutions for the dealership’s exterior pole lighting and building lighting, utilizing a state-of-the-art energy management system to control the outside lights by dimming them down to 5% during off hours. “This helps reduce energy usage and cut down on light pollution in the area, which is a huge benefit to the city,” Carlson said.

Westside Toyota management is encouraged by the many improvements that have been made to the dealership’s facility, which, to date, have resulted in a 40% to 50% savings on the company’s energy usage.

“This project was more about improving and enhancing the different work areas for the staff at Westside Toyota than it was about saving energy,” commented Carlson. “But the energy savings ended up being an added bonus that everyone is very happy about.”