The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum 2014 average purchased power cost was $0.088 per kWh. The year runs from the middle of December 2013 until the same time in 2014 as determined by the power company reading the meters. PTM has two 480Y/277 volt services 3400 feet apart. This cost includes all taxes, energy, and delivery costs.
Off- peak service is not available so all hours are considered “on-peak” for demand purposes. PTM has some automatic load control and shifting. However, during intense service during the August Washington County Fairs some added manual measures are used.
As the traction power units have PTM owned meters, we know only 20% of the kWh is used for trolley operation. Lighting is the biggest user of kWh followed by HVAC. Shop equipment is less than 10%.
PTM has several energy efficiency projects in planning but the major project under way is the replacement of the 400 watt metal halide fixtures in the trolley shop with LED fixtures. While only two are lit at present (construction goes on), the lighting is impressive and a huge reduction in kWh usage is at hand. This will drop the total bills but the average price will not change much.
So how does your museum compare?
Dennis Bockus

That's a much better KWH rate than we're getting in New York State, and we're not powering traction yet. We do have a TOU demand meter that's off on weekends and at 9PM on weekdays. I don't remember what time it turns on in the morning.

P. S. One of our trustees is working on a proposal to convert all museum lighting (gallery and high bay) to LED.

Generally there are 3 common kinds of lights.
1. Incandescent
2. LED
3. Discharge lighting (gas filled tube between electrodes). This is a huge family which includes fluorescent, neon, metal halide, mercury vapor, low and high pressure sodium.

Based on your power prices, you pay 70 cents per year to burn 1 watt 24x7.

So that 10 watt cable modem/ router you leave running 24x7, that's $7 a year. Speaking of vampire loads. Those are insidious because they're on 24x7.

As opposed to, say, the big discharge lights in the WRM maintenance shop, which are only used Wednesdays and Saturdays from evening halflight to 7 pm, i.e. not very much. I bet the vampire loads all over WRM take more.

Now let's talk efficiency. If you wanted to light the interior of a sphere, discharge lighting would win by a margin of 30-40% over LED. But really, you want to light a wedge or cone. Draw it out on an orange, and you'll see where you only want 1/4 to 1/10 of the total sphere. Reflectors try but are not that efficient. So LEDs auto-win right out of the chute.

LED naturally lights a wedge of 120-160 degrees. This lends itself to using lenses (near 100% efficient) to aim it further. This is the secret of LED efficiency: use it wisely.

Unfortunately the products I see on the market don't make that easy. LED wallpacks still light up the sky, wall and neighbor's bedroom. I want LED spotlights for security lighting to hit a specific area from a distant pole, but I can only find them in 12v automotive types.

It's totally fine to keep using discharge lighting in places only used 1-2 days a week. I would even use it in new builds because you can so cheaply get "hand me down" lights, and PTM, make sure to hand yours down, NORM and TLE&W come to mind.

Especially save old fluorescent fixtures of excellent build quality. New fixtures are flimsyjunk, and it is astonishingly easy and cheap to upgrade the old fixtures to state-of-the-art.

I will post other messages going into more detail about making the most out of LED and discharge lighting.

Visitors to my "home museum" sometimes ask about our electric bill, and I tell them--"that's not something I handle, but one thing's for sure, if you received our bill by mistake, you'd be on the phone to Customer Service at your local utility very quickly."

At PTM we now have a well insulated and heated shop. The two track main bay is roughly 5800 sq. ft. This has led to a noticeable increase in volunteers in the last two years. The existing metal halide 400-watt fixtures are now going on 19 years and the mortality of the ballasts is starting to become a problem. With the increase in volunteers it is not uncommon for the shop to have significant usage four to five days per week. Indeed, Wednesdays and Saturdays routinely have around sixteen volunteers in the shop. How do we know this? All the major PTM high bay lighting systems have elapsed time meters so we know the hours – no guessing at all. These meters can actually be read in a read only manner over the ‘net. Also, the meters are automatically loaded daily into a csv log file downloadable over the net.

That said, the shop lights are on about 3000 hours per year. Metal halide lamps have a large lumen depreciation and more starts make this progress even faster. This depreciation can be a 50% decrease in light output with the power input being almost 100%. About 10 years back, a half dozen T-8 fixtures were installed for “walk through” lights (just enough to see where you were going) if one needed to go into the shop for a tool or something to avoid a start cycle on the metal halide fixtures and the wait to get some light.

With some dead storage track space in the shop being remodeled into working shop track space, it represented a trip wire as the space had no lighting. Originally, T-5 lights were contemplated but the LEDs were persuasive. True, they cost more to purchase, the same to install, but the almost zero depreciation, instant turn on with no cycle depreciation, long life, and no mercury disposal issues, they won out.

The state of the writer’s residence no longer allows florescent tubes from industrial and commercial properties to be thrown in the trash. They are hazardous waste. The milage in your state may vary.

Also, there is a power company incentive program for conversion. The boiler plate does require that the removed fixtures never be connected to their system again.

Dennis Bockus BSEE

Ironically, this query comes at a time when the Baltimore Streetcar Museum is having much of its lighting and wiring upgraded, including new lighting.

I don't have figures on power consumption or costs yet, but I have two anecdotes shared by those who should know:
1) The cost of the power to run a round trip or two with only a handful (2-4) of passengers can exceed the revenue from those passengers;
2) Supposedly the cost to operate a theoretically "expendable" (from the standpoint of an all-Baltimore collection) PCC (of which the BSM now has five, only one a Baltimore original) is supposedly much higher than running an older open or closed car--as much as double, I recall being told. This kind of math enters into the grand scheme of whether to reduce wear on the "irreplacable vintage" Baltimore cars by supplementing operation with "foreign" PCCs.

Another suggestion for shop lighting is to install skylights.

We did this at WRM (in conjunction with installing a foam roof), and the skylights dramatically reduced the need for interior lighting during daylight hours.

I do not have current information for Orange Empire.

But, about 10 years ago we were reading the meter before and after each operating session. At that time we were told that the vast majority of the power bill was going to the weekday "housekeeping" load including the security lighting.

What you pay can be a function of which tariff is applied. In California where the PUC has many different tariff schedules, the radio station where I worked reduced its electric bill by $2,000 per month by changing to a different tariff. Of course a radio station transmitter power use is very different from traction power. It never changes 24/7 except when the tower lights are turned on at night.

So a talk with your local power company might reduce your power bill depending on your operating schedule. Off peak power typically is much cheaper than peak demand power.

To Mr. Mitchell:

Power consumption of a streetcar is roughly proportional to the horsepower rating of the traction motors. Thus, a PCC with 220 horseepower would consume 1.83 times the power of a 2 motor wood car with 120 horsepower. Your source is correct. BSM car 6144, with 200 horsepower, is almost the equivalent of a PCC, as far as power consumption. If your goal is minimizing traction power cost, run Birney cars! Maybe someone from Ft. Collins can provide some of their experience.

That analysis of BSM cars would be a LOT more impressive if the BSM actually HAD the 6144 instead of Seashore. ;-)

Oops. Meant to type 6119. Can't keep all of the trolley museum rosters in memory, you know.

The 2015 Pennsylvania Trolley Museum total power costs are in. Average for the year with a May rate increase is $0.095 per kWh. Total consumption was down a little due to LED lights being installed in the main bay of the shop and the winter was not as cold.

On the other hand, 2015 was a record year for PTM in many ways, slightly over 32,600 visitors, record Santa, record fair, record Bunny, etc. which means more trolley trips were operated but still we come out a little lower in kWh.

How was your museum's power cost and visitor's for 2015?

PTM also generates some of its power via solar panels. What percentage of your electrical needs were supplied by solar?

About 17%. However, the power cost is the power bills including taxes, delivery, energy, etc. costs divided by the kWh purchased.