Lighting up An Iconic Philadelphia Community Tennis Center

New LED lighting helped the Legacy Youth Tennis Center improve its courts for players and save energy—and incentives helped save over $50,000 in upfront costs.

Built in 2006, the Legacy Youth Tennis Center is the product of an iconic Philadelphia tennis nonprofit founded more than 70 years ago. The Center’s 16 indoor and outdoor courts and gym host free and low-cost programs for community youth—like summer, fall and spring camps. This safe, nurturing, inclusive environment hosts more than 3,500 local kids a year, helping them on their journey as athletes, students and leaders.

But to provide the community a great place for learning and tennis, the Center needed new lights. The older lighting used in its indoor courts provided lower quality lighting for play than LEDs—which are now the gold standard across the world on professional and amateur tennis courts due to their lower energy usage, longer life and improved quality. These qualities make LEDs a favorite upgrade for several businesses and facilities, from tennis courts to grocery stores.

With LED lighting, the Center saves 36,000 kilowatt-hours of energy per year. That is more than the sum of energy used in three average U.S. homes per year.1

To celebrate its 70th anniversary, the Legacy Youth Tennis Center worked with PECO Small Business Solutions to upgrade its indoor court and gym lighting to the gold standard, improving their facility for kids, parents and employees. After receiving three bids from local providers, they chose their favorite, and completed the upgrades in just one week. By switching over 173 fixtures to high-quality, energy-efficient LEDs, the Center will save almost 36,000 kilowatt-hours per year in energy. That’s $5,7552—a big chunk of their total energy bill. Even better, PECO Ways to Save incentives covered 40% of the capital costs of the upgrade—saving the Center $51,300.

“The space is now perfectly bright”

Players saw an immediate improvement. "The space is now perfectly bright, and there’s no more interference from the lights. The space looks so modern," said Kat Sorokko, Senior Director of Operations at Legacy Youth Tennis and Education.

The Tennis Center’s new LEDs don’t just improve the space for everyone and save money on future energy bills. LEDs last longer than traditional incandescent bulbs and they require less maintenance, less often. That means the club can spend less on equipment like a boom lift. With the old lighting, maintenance workers needed to pull out the lift every few months to replace a bulb. Now they can focus on tennis and the community, instead.

Legacy was so pleased with the results of their first upgrade, they reinvested the incentives in another project. For the second project, the remaining interior lighting was upgraded, as was the parking lot lighting. Best of all, the older stadium lighting was replaced with efficient and bright LED lights that were a win all around.

• Upfront Cost of Improvements:

  $19,695

• PECO Ways to Save Incentives:

  $15,672

• Total Customer Savings:

  80%

The annual average energy savings of $5,817 resulting from the upgrade is equivalent to purchasing more than 1,450 individual cans of tennis balls.¹