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AD Editorial Board

Bill Luttrell

Senior Locations Strategist, Werner Global Logistics, Werner Enterprises
Bradley Migdal

Senior Managing Director, Business Incentives Practice, Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.
Brian Corde

Managing Partner, Atlas Insight
Christine Bustamante

National Co-Leader, Global Location and Expansion Services, State and Local Tax, KPMG LLP
Dan Levine

Practice Leader, Location Strategies and Economic Development, Oxford Economics, Inc.
Dan White

Senior Economist, Moody's Analytics
Dean J. Uminski, CEcD

Principal, Crowe Horwath
Dennis Cuneo

Managing Partner , Fisher & Phillips
Eric Stavriotis

Senior Vice President, CBRE, Inc.
Gregory Burkart

Managing Director and City Leader, Site Selection & Incentives Advisory , Duff & Phelps, LLC
Jamie Lominack

Corporate Real Estate Manager, Michelin North America
John Morris

SIOR, Industrial Services Lead for the Americas, Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.
Josh Bays

Principal, Site Selection Group, LLC
Les Cranmer

Senior Managing Director, Savills Studley
Marc Beauchamp

President & CEO, The CAI Global Group
Michael McDermott

Consulting Manager, Global Business Consulting, Cushman & Wakefield
Minah Hall

Managing Director, True Partners Consulting LLC
Scott Kupperman

Founder, Kupperman Location Solutions
Scott Redabaugh

Managing Director, JLL
Stephen Gray

CEO, Gray Construction
Thomas J. Stringer, Esq.

Managing Director & Practice Leader, Site Selection and Business Incentives Group, BDO USA
Tim Feemster

Managing Principal, Foremost Quality Logistics

ElectriCities, Finding Ways for Businesses to Boost Their Bottom Line in North Carolina

Steve Kaelble, Staff Editor, Area Development

Dec/Jan 09

It seems like all you ever hear about these days are problems. ElectriCities would like to interrupt the negativity with some talk about solutions - specifically, its Energy Solutions Partner program. As the name implies, it's all about finding solutions for boosting the bottom line.

One such solution is the program's lighting audit. Part of the audit is about finding instances when more energy-efficient lights would help, or when lights are lit if they aren't needed. But a lighting audit also might discover that part of a manufacturer's facility is not properly lit, and with more lighting, productivity would increase. It also might help a clothing retailer discover lighting options that more accurately display colors, and that can increase sales.

Another bottom-line booster is distributed generation, which calls for installing peak-shaving generators on-site at certain customer locations. When a period of peak power usage arrives, the generators switch on and reduce the customer's need for power from the grid. It helps makes the overall electric system work more efficiently, and saves money for the participating businesses. And those businesses with generators benefit further by having a source of backup power in case of outages.