BAR HARBOR – Thousands of black and white mice were intent Tuesday afternoon on the business of sleeping and eating in their banks of plastic cages in one of the high-technology mouse research rooms at The Jackson Laboratory.

More than 750,000 live mice are found at the nonprofit research institute on any given day. Keeping all those rodents at the proper temperature and humidity demands power and lots of it.

“Every minute that goes by, the lab is paying $7.43 for electricity,” Norm Burdzel, senior mechanical engineer, said at a press conference.

Though that rate drops significantly at night and on the weekends, officials there are as interested as any homeowner in cutting electrical and heating bills – especially in light of this season’s energy crunch.

That’s why the laboratory was a willing participant in a business program offered by Efficiency Maine, a statewide effort to promote the more efficient use of electricity. The effort is funded by electricity consumers and administered by the Maine Public Utilities Commission.

After workers installed a cutting edge lighting system in one of the mouse rooms and a state-of-the-art control system in the boiler room, Efficiency Maine wrote The Jackson Laboratory incentive checks totaling $46,683.

“The Jackson Laboratory has really been what I call the poster child for a new way of heating,” Steve Diamond of the Maine Public Utilities Commission said. “They are doing it exactly the way we hope others will do it.”

Laboratory employees proudly showed off the new control system in the boiler room, shouting to be heard over the din of the gigantic boilers.

“We’re looking at $53,000, roughly, in fuel savings per year,” John Fitzpatrick, senior director of the laboratory’s facility services, said. “The boilers are operating at 87.5 percent efficiency. That’s nearly unheard of.”

The Jackson Laboratory, with its 1,400 employees and its 40-foot-long, 800-horsepower boilers, operates at the larger end of the state’s energy-consumption scale. Efficiency Maine also works with small businesses, farms, colleges, local governments and schools, officials said.

“The project doesn’t have to be a $43,000 project for Efficiency Maine to look at it,” said Linda Viens, program manager. “We’ve handed out checks for $4, $50,000 and everything in between.”

Spending a few extra dollars now on energy-efficient lighting and appliances will lower energy costs and help the environment down the road, according to Diamond.

“We’re not trying to say to people, ‘don’t do the things you’ve been doing,'” he said. “You can do what you’ve been doing, but you can do it more efficiently and at the end of the day it will cost you much less.”

For information on incentive programs, call 1-866-376-2463 or go to the Web site: efficiencyMAINE.com.