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Dim aisles, bright idea

In a short-term conservation move, Home Depot and Publix chains hope to save enough to power about 30,000 homes.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published September 10, 2005

Hey, who turned out the lights? Some big retailers have dimmed down the wattage and are nervously hoping customers won't notice.

It's part of a voluntarily response to President Bush's call for energy conservation after Hurricane Katrina hobbled the Gulf Coast oil industry and sent energy prices soaring.

At Home Depot Inc., workers are unplugging huge ceiling displays of light fixtures and ceiling fans for five hours every afternoon. At Publix Super Markets Inc. they have switched off one-third of the fixtures that light up the aisles and told managers to bump up the thermostats a couple of degrees.

Both chains asked workers to shut off lights, TV sets and computers in unoccupied offices, bathrooms and break areas. Even the tinted glass Publix headquarters in Lakeland - which usually glows luminescent green after sunset - is virtually pitch black at night now.

Atlanta-based Home Depot Inc. also dimmed the bright, white ceiling lights in 600 of 1,000 stores that have been fitted in recent years with skylights. All the stores have been refitted with more efficient fluorescent bulbs. The company also handed managers a laundry list of potential energy saving options such as closing the garage doors halfway at the commercial contractors entrances to save energy.

"We're doing it because it's the right thing to do," said Jen King, spokeswoman for Home Depot, which is also staging clinics and adding store displays that outline energy conservation tactics customers can try at home.

Combined, the two chains hope to shave 25-million kilowatt hours of juice a month off their power bills. That's enough to power about 30,000 homes.

But few are talking about keeping the lights dimmer beyond the short term in places where customers congregate. That's because research shows shoppers prefer clean, bright stores over dark and dingy-looking ones.

That explains why a nervous Publix took out full-page we're-all-in-this-together style ads asking customers to "bear with us" during the energy cutback and cautioning that Katrina may cause some product shortages.

"The ambiance in our stores is very important to our customers," Publix spokeswoman Maria Brous said. "So store managers and people at headquarters are carefully monitoring customer reaction to see if we need to re-adjust the lights."

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or 727 893-8252.

[Last modified September 10, 2005, 01:22:18]