ANACORTES — Lights just got smarter at City Hall.

They dim as the intensity of sunlight shining through windows increases, and turn themselves off when no one is around.

Officials at Anacortes and Puget Sound Energy spent almost $104,000 to upgrade lighting at five municipal buildings as part of the city’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint and save some cash.

In City Hall alone, the upgrade will reduce the municipality’s kilowatt-hour usage by almost 38 percent. Fidalgo Center, the city’s maintenance shop, main fire station and waste treatment water plant are the other locations.

The lighting improvements, including automatic shut-offs and dimmers, should save the city about $16,716 on its electric bill this year by not using 212,599 kilowatt hours of power, said Russ Pittis, Anacortes city facilities manager.

“Any time you save money, you’re going to want to do it,” Pittis said. “It’s taxpayers’ money we’re saving.”

A PSE grant paid for $51,532, almost half, of the $103,748 upgrade. The program, which is offered to commercial and municipal customers, is similar to rebates offered to residential customers.

As part of the upgrade, 75 wall switches with motion-detecting sensors were installed to turn off lights. The city also installed 98 “ballasts” to automatically adjust the light levels, dimming illumination when the sun shines.

“It’s something we’ve been working on — the idea of being more efficient,” Pittis said.

Being more efficient doesn’t only apply to the lights. Over the past two years, the city has worked on reducing its carbon footprint, said Fred Buckenmeyer, Anacortes Public Works director.

Efforts include purchasing hybrid vehicles, changing to more compact fluorescent and LED light bulbs, implementing a no-idling vehicle policy, switching to biodiesel to burn sewage at the city’s waste water treatment plant, and the labor-intensive process of fine-tuning the sewage incinerator to reduce fuel consumption, Buckenmeyer said.

“It started off being about carbon footprint,” Buckenmeyer said. “But as the prices started to increase, it became not only a mix of carbon footprint but just plain dollars.”

Puget Sound Energy helps fund projects such as the city’s lighting upgrade because it is less expensive to help customers conserve power than to build new natural gas-burning power plants, said Rebekah Anderson, a spokeswoman for the utility. In the long run, all customers save money because power plant construction costs cause rate hikes, she said.

At a city’s or business’ request, the utility sends an engineer to conduct an inventory and determine whether the cost of the project justifies the power saved, said Bill Younger, a PSE manager who oversees the grant and rebate program for commercial customers, such as Anacortes. In the case of Anacortes, the city also worked with a consultant. Once the inventory is finished, the utility determines whether to offer the customer a grant.

The PSE grant program is paid for with a fraction of its fees, and in 2008 helped save the utility 100 million megawatts, Younger said.

“I’m kind looking forward to seeing the bills from this year to last year,” Pittis said.

• Marta Murvosh can be reached at 360-416-2149 or .

Light savings

The City of Anacortes recently upgraded the lights in its facilities and estimates the following savings for 2009:

Building reduced kilowatt hours savings

City Hall 68,424 $5,405

Fidalgo Center 17,197 $1,359

Maintenance shop 39,034 $3,084

Fire station No. 1 11,738 $927

Waste water treatment plant 76,206 $5,941