(Note: This article appeared in the July 2011 issue of CE Pro.)
Hometronics Lifestyles partners Jim Sweeney and Michael Purcell review plans in their Connecticut office. The company has expanded into solar thermal, LED lighting and energy brokering.
Jim Sweeney is driving to yet another appointment in Connecticut. This meeting is with the owner of 20 buildings, including 11 Dunkin’ Donuts shops and five restaurants. The guy has a million-dollar energy bill on his Dunkin’ Donut shops alone. Sweeney plans to talk with him about reducing that bill—and he has several energy-saving services in his tool kit.
Sweeney’s company, Hometronics Lifestyles, in Durham, Conn., has expanded to provide a host of green tech services in the last couple of years—and he isn’t satisfied with popping few energy monitors into the high-end homes Hometronics services on Connecticut’s Gold Coast. Hometronics also does commercial work and performs solar thermal installations, has the New England distributorship for Solais LED lighting, and is an energy broker in Connecticut with licenses pending in New York and Pennsylvania.
At one point, Sweeney had four business cards for Hometronics Lifestyles, Hometronics Solar, Hometronics Power (the energy brokerage) and Solais. Though now the commercial and green tech parts of the business will come under the name Eco-Tronics, an LLC with the same owners as Hometronics Lifestyles.
Sweeney reports later that the meeting with the Dunkin’ Donuts franchise owner went well, though Hometronics won’t be doing the Dunkins’ jobs, as they’re in another state. “We put together a proposal for solar thermal and for all his A/V and camera work [for one of the restaurants]. It looks like a $50,000 plus job for A/V, and this would never have happened without green,” he says.
The green part of the job also includes LED lighting in the kitchen, dining and bar areas and parking lot. “It looks like we can save the restaurant $31,000 per location, plus the savings from solar thermal,” Sweeney says.
Sweeney is also pursuing country clubs and going after their lighting business. “And now that we can talk about being an energy management company, the first thing they have to do is give me their electric bill,” he says. “Then I can tell them I can save them thousands.” via the energy brokerage part of the business.
Like many custom electronics firms, Hometronics Lifestyles has been hit hard by the economy and dwindling A/V margins. In the last couple of years the company has laid off 12 people and closed a showroom, but cleared $1 million in revenue last year, and Sweneey is looking at 18-month sales projects of $10 million for Eco-Tronics and $3 million for Hometronics Lifestyles.
Yes, he’s banking heavily on the ‘Eco’ side of the business.
Lighting Up Profits
Of all the green tech services Hometronics has gotten into, Sweeney thinks the LED lighting market shows the most promise. “LED retrofit lighting over next five years will grow to a $50 billion-a-year business,” Sweeney says. And he expects to it to be a big part of Eco-Tronics’ business.
Parking garages are his biggest target, because the lights are on 24 hours a day. “With anyone running lights more than eight hours a day, the return on investment is very, very fast,” Sweeney says (see sidebar). That includes commercial buildings with lobbies. One 75-watt LED fixture replaces a 275-watt fixture, and the typical ROI is about three years. And that doesn’t factor in statewide energy-efficient programs or tax incentives for commercial lighting.
Hometronics is an approved contractor for Connecticut’s Clean Energy Efficiency Fund, where businesses must use approved contractors to get incentives and can finance their energy-efficient projects.
The high-end homes also serviced by Hometronics are getting LED retrofits. Hometronics starts their typical clients with new LED lamps in their kitchens. One home with 16 new LEDs in the kitchen will save 72 percent on lighting that space, and Sweeney says the payback will be in two years.
Sweeney’s pitch to homeowners is that they’re not going to happy with the low-lumen output of LEDs available at stores like Home Depot, that the Solais lamps are high-quality and approved for use in recessed cans, and that an LED shouldn’t be considered just a light bulb but a piece of electronic equipment.
The Solais lamps use active thermal cooling via whisper-quiet fans for heat management, can dim down to 1 percent and do not lose much luminance while used with an incandescent dimmer.
Sweeney and Purcell with their big green moneymaker, Solais LED lighting.
Solar Thermal
Sweeney and Purcell with their big green moneymaker, Solais LED lighting.
In late 2009 Sweeney started Hometronics Solar, and installs Velux solar thermal system to heat hot water. The target market is 120-gallon systems. His crew can get three panels on the roof with a 120-gallon tank and be out of there in three days.
Sweeney says a typical system can produce about 50 percent of the hot water for a restaurant and about 80 percent of the hot water for a residence. Hometronics has done about a dozen solar thermal installations, and he anticipates doing $1 million in solar thermal systems this year.
What most people don’t realize, Sweeney says, is that they can get a much quicker ROI and more bang for their buck via solar thermal than with solar electric (or PV). It’s a really misunderstood market, he says, but once you get in front of people and explain it, they understand it.
The restaurant owner will even use the solar thermal panels at the Westport, Conn., site to help draw attention, as the community has sign restrictions.
Sweeney jokes that he’s learned a lot about plumbing through the solar thermal installations, but they have led to getting his hands on those clients’ energy bills.
Energy Brokering
Discount energy brokers are popping up all over the place, and Sweeney got his company in on this service. Sweeney is a master broker for Discount Energy, which means he hires other independent energy brokers to sell cheaper energy generation rates and earns .03 cents per clients for the generation portion of their bills (separate from the distribution charge).
“We can switch people over and save them 20 percent on electricity bills, and we see our commissions double every month,” he says. Even better, it’s a recurring revenue stream.
This arm of the business currently has about 800 clients, and one account in Norwalk has saved in excess of $50,000 a year in electricity.
Being a master broker saves him from having to hire salespeople directly or staffing a call center. He has also sent mailers out to existing clients, and when he talks with clients and gets their energy bills, he can sell them the service.
Eco-Tronics
The new Eco-Tronics arm of the business will primarily target commercial installations, as Sweeney says no has really figured out the market for home energy management systems yet. In addition, energy monitoring systems like the eMonitor from Powerhouse Dynamics that Sweeney has installed need to interface with home control system to trigger energy-saving events through automation.
“If we only did solar, I would have stayed right there [with the Hometronics name]. But the market for green products is too huge. It’s no different from when I went from security to A/V. The fastest lesson we learned was not to keep our security name, so we changed our name to reflect A/V.” Eco-Tronics will attract much more commercial work than a company named Hometronics, and it establishes a name in sustainability.
Having a separate arm of the company, he says, will actually help the company’s accountant, because now there will be two sets of books, instead of four, and each focused on its own part of the business. There will be some overlap when energy-efficient equipment is sold into homes, however.
Getting Started in Green
Sweeney dove into green services at end of 2007, after hearing a presentation by architect Steve Winter on green building.
He went to green shows, enrolled in as many classes as he could and learned as much as possible about green building. He became co-chair for the green committee for the National Association for Home Builders Association and is a NAHB green professional. Now he’s going for his certification as a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) AP (Accredited Professional). He’s also studying to become a sustainable officer that many corporations will require. “I’m looking for knowledge and as many credentials I can get. I’m not looking for a career change, but want to have the knowledge to share it with people, and that I have the credentials,” he says.
Sweeney has also taught courses for architects and real estate agents, and ran the Lunch and Learn program for the ASID (American Society of Interior Designers). “Amazingly, they really need education on this,” he says of these professions. “I’ve been able to get out and get my face in front of people. And it gives me the opportunity to meet the people who make the decisions.”
He also networks like crazy. He joined the local green council and is often approached with questions about green tech. He attends the Green Drinks social events for the USGBC’s (United States Green Building Council’s) Green Building Council for Connecticut. “It’s networking with a purpose. Over the last two years, I’ve gone back to what I did 32 years ago with chamber [of commerce] after hour-events, only now with green networking events.”
He’s done local trade shows and gotten great press with simple things like setting up the recycling bins at the shows. “We wound up with Channel 12 news here and five different newspapers.”
And the result of all of Sweeney’s green tech and sustainability business efforts? “Now we have more work that we can handle, and we’re looking to fill installer positions.”
