Southwest Electric Cooperative is offering a Business Lighting Rebate to our commercial, industrial, educational and agricultural members through the Take Control & Save energy efficiency program.

Lighting is a critical component of every business. Employees must be able to see to safely perform their jobs, and floor space should be aesthetically pleasing to encourage sales.

You may be surprised to learn, lighting can be the largest user of electricity for a business. Lighting systems can produce large amounts of heat as well, and are typically the largest source of waste heat inside commercial buildings. Energy efficient lighting, such as compact fluorescent bulbs and LED's, add less heat than inefficient lighting. By decreasing internal heat gain, efficient lighting also reduces a building's cooling requirements.

Your business could be spending more than needed to effectively light your facilities. Significant cost savings can be achieved with energy efficiency improvements, and due to continually improving technology, lighting usually provides the highest return on investment of major upgrades.

With good design, lighting energy use in most buildings can be cut in half while maintaining or improving lighting quality. Such designs typically pay for themselves in energy savings alone within a few years, and they offer more benefits in terms of the potential for smaller and less costly cooling systems and more productive work environments.


Do you qualify?

Members with greater than 10 bulbs or fixtures at their installation site will qualify. The rebate amount will be determined prior to installation and is limited to $30,000 per member, per year.

How do you participate?

For existing facilities, a walk through of your facility must be conducted by Southwest Electric Cooperative to audit the existing lighting inventory.

For new construction, please contact the cooperative before you purchase the lighting; this is done for two reasons: one, to ensure the lighting you install will qualify for a rebate; two, it allows you to know how much your rebate will be for your budgeting purposes.

Work with the cooperative to fill out the lighting rebate application; provided at the time of the audit.

Pre-approval is required before you purchase and install the lighting equipment. Once the cooperative approves the proposed lighting, you may install the approved lighting and equipment.

After installation, the cooperative will perform another walk through audit to verify the lighting installation. The lighting specification sheets and the receipts will need to accompany the completed rebate application.

Rebate amounts will vary depending upon which bulbs and/or fixtures you replace the existing lighting with. The total rebate cannot exceed 40 percent of the total capital cost of the new lighting equipment.

To get your Business Lighting Rebate started please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 800.262.0326

For full program details, you may download a copy of the Business Lighting Guide.  Due to the large file size of the guide, it is offered in two downloads of 11 pages each:

Business Lighting Guide, Pages 1-11. 
Business Lighting Guide, Pages 12-22.