With the high cost of energy one of the territory’s most pressing issues, LED Conversions Inc. offers a way to save money on electric bills.
“LEDs will save you up to 80 percent of your electric energy costs for lighting,” said Robin Gallup, the company’s St. John-based sales representative.
LED Conversions sells Cree brand interior and exterior LED bulbs that come directly from the factory to the consumer. The company’s main product is LED bulbs manufactured to retrofit existing fixtures. This means that when businesses or residents want to replace their existing incandescent bulbs with more energy-efficient light-emitting diodes, they won’t have to buy new fixtures.
While this is a help for residential customers, Gallup said the company’s biggest customers are businesses.
“That’s where the big savings comes in,” she said.
The process takes several months and starts with a tracing made by the customer or its engineer of the existing fixture. Gallup recommends that the customer order a couple of samples first before placing a larger order.
“Get one and see how you like it,” she suggested.
The bulbs come in three varieties. They are soft or living room light, retail lighting and security lighting.
LEDs last 11 to 15 years, less than the 15 to 20 years on the mainland, but Gallup said the territory’s hotter climate takes a bigger toll. On the plus side, Gallup said LEDs are not affected by the territory’s electrical brown outs, surges and outages. She said those problems reduce the life of other types of bulbs.
LEDs also save labor costs for businesses that must use bucket trucks or tall ladders to frequently replace other types of bulbs.
While they cost more than other light bulbs, she said she had a customer who recouped his investment in six months because it saved so much on the electric bill.
Gallup got into selling LEDs through her charter sailboat business. She and her husband, Rick, run Long Distance out of Maho Bay Camps. One of their guests was an owner of LED Conversions. She said he offered the job to her husband, but he had no sales skills so he turned it down.
“But I do,” she said.
Her sales ability coupled with an interest in green energy got her the job. She subsequently received certification by the U.S. Energy Department.
The New Hampshire native graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of New Hampshire. She’s worked on and off in various nursing capacities throughout her career, but when her husband took a summer building job at Maho Bay Camps, she came along. They moved to the island full time in 1995.
She worked at Maho Bay for a few years, started TLC nursing on St. John and after their son, Brook, was killed in an auto accident in 1999 on St. John, moved into chartering full time.
The couple now spends summers in Maine, where Gallup works part-time as a nurse, but return to chartering on St. John in the winter. Gallup said she can sell LED lights from both locations.
“I really enjoy talking green energy,” she said.
Gallup can be reached at 340-513-1386 or robin@ledconversionsinc.com. More information about LED lights can be found at www.ledconversionsinc.com.
