For the last three years Managing Director Paul Cope of UK based March Foods had been looking for a way to reduce energy consumption in his warehouses. After rejecting voltage controllers as old technology, he began to examine LED lighting as a potential smart solution. In January 2010 he knew he had found the answer when installer Tom Klimes of Interior Control Ltd working in conjunction with Ocip Energy Ltd presented him with an LED high bay unit from Dialight, a UK based company specialising in applied LED technology.
The Lighting Challenge
Paul Cope describes the problems he wanted to solve: “We had two 3,250 square metre (35,000 sq ft) warehouses with a total of 84 x 450W HPS lamps operating 24/6. Even though we are not constantly in and out of all bays in the warehouse all the time, the old lamps couldn’t be switched off as they took 10-15 minutes to re-strike, so I wanted a more energy efficient solution.
“Then there’s the maintenance problem. With 15 metre high ceilings (49 ft) you need to bring in a cherry picker to replace failed lamps and you can’t have people working underneath. That means we’d typically wait until 4-8 lamps had failed before hiring the scissor lift over a weekend to replace them. This was costing about £2,000 annually.”
“On top of that the HPS lamps are fragile and hang about 4-5 feet from the ceiling, so that just puts them in the range of an extended pallet truck. It was quite common to lose a few of them that way.”
LED lighting
We replaced the 84 x 450W HPS lamps on a one-to-one basis with Dialight’s DuroSite™ Series LED High Bay. This highly robust 150W fitting features six arrays in a compact oval pattern that enables it to direct light efficiently with less wastage and delivers an immediate saving in power of 66%.
Unlike HPS, the LED lighting has instant-on ability, so it works well with occupancy sensors and this has further increased energy saving to 72% as well as reducing carbon emissions by over 100 tonnes per year. The oval pattern of the arrays also means less wasted light on racking and more directed at floor level in the aisles where 110 lux was measured under the HPS, which had dimmed over time. The LED’s delivered a brilliant 221 lux after the installation of the LED High Bays.
Why March Foods chose Dialight
For this job we went straight for an LED solution and Dialight’s High Bays are the market leaders in this sector. You can see the quality – they’re solidly built, durable and they come with a five year warranty from a £100 million UK PLC company. Their warranty is backed by a company with a long track record in this field.
As a British SME, March Foods was able to have its LED installation funded, so the capital expenditure is effectively funded by the energy savings. Having originally underestimated the energy savings to be made from using occupancy sensors Paul Cope now estimates that payback will take less than three years and may even be six months sooner than that when movements in electricity prices are taken into account. He reasons that with this sort of payback period it makes sense to retrofit LEDs even if you have a lease of 5 years .or more on your building.
Ocip Energy Ltd
Tel: 01242 250633
Aidan Brown can be contacted directly at aidan.brown@ocip.co.uk
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