LED leads the way
Published: 16 June, 2011
LED technology is slashing the cost of lighting shopping centres, and the
latest systems are as effective as traditional alternatives
With CRC playing on the minds of centre managers and landlords alike, the energy and cost savings of LEDs are hard to ignore. There have always been reservations, particularly about colour rendition, but with technology improving all the time, experts insist they tick all the boxes.
Compared to incandescent and fluorescent bulbs, LEDs are 93 per cent more energy efficient in lab conditions, and the lifetime of a quality LED is 50,000 hours, compared to approximately 6,000 hours for an incandescent bulb, saving on maintenance and fitting costs. And they don’t fail suddenly like traditional bulbs but degrade gradually over time.
Nick Wraith, managing director at Lumenal, the display LED lighting division of RMU specialists Unibox, describes LEDs as cost-effective, reliable and consistent.
“LEDs have a number of benefits,” he says. “The key thing is that they have arrived at a point where they are more viable or better than standard lighting.”
He continues: “There has been great resistance to buy into LEDs. There’s a common belief that LEDs give off a ‘horrible blue, white colour’ which is true if you buy poor quality and badly specified lighting products. But you can get exactly the colour you’re looking for – with new technology in colour rendition, you can get a more natural tone, more warmth.
“The quality of the light has improved and that’s vital to a feel-good factor when people spend time in indoor spaces.”
Jeremy Taylor is CEO of Power Solutions, a commercial energy consultant helping businesses to make significant savings through the provision and fitting of LED lighting.
“LEDs are so much more sophisticated,” he says. “They can last over six years if on 24/7 – the benefits from that respect are phenomenal.”
He gave an example. Power Solutions recently supplied LED lighting to a chicken farm which keeps its lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The installation cost £27,000 but payback time was just 10 months with savings of £30,000 annually.
Although he warned that savings on a similar scale can only be reached if the right products are in place.
“It’s difficult for clients to understand the products unless the supplier knows exactly what they’re talking about,” he says. “And often the products aren’t put through proper stress tests and may not last as long as the supplier claims.
“The first thing is to have a proper survey so you can get the right quality lighting that does what it says on the tin,” he advises. “Choose a trusted supplier with expert electrical engineers, get samples and test them in the location.”
There are several financing options available, including an interest free government loan, available in Wales and Northern Ireland, for companies looking to convert to LED. For businesses that gain a 2.5 tonne carbon saving by converting to LED, the government will loan up to £1,000 per year for up to four years. This can be combined with other financing options.
Maintenance is an area where significant savings can be made.
Wraith points out that lighting in the mall environment is often mounted high up and requires specialist equipment like cherry pickers to replace. This is one of the aspects where LEDs can deliver dramatic cost savings of up to 80 per cent annually.
Taylor agrees: “A big factor in shopping centres is that a lot of the lighting is at high level. If a light goes out it reflects badly on the centre but they’re very expensive to change because of the equipment needed.
“We recently did some work at a college with 30 metre high ceilings. It cost £1,000 a day to use a spider access platform just to change a light bulb – LEDs get away from that problem.”
Endless possibilities
Caroline Easton, retail segment manager at Philips Lighting, outlines how LED design can create all-important ambience.
“A shopping centre is more than just a place to shop – consumers go for an overall experience,” she says. “Colour-changing LED light fittings allow the lighting design to be far more creative in enhancing the shopping experience. Adjusting the proportion of the primary colours enables a wide range of hues to be created to address a variety of requirements. These could include varying ambiences for different times of day and/or season, or to reinforce brand identity.
“When mixed with animation techniques, LED lighting can deliver a high level of interaction with consumers. At the St David’s shopping centre in Cardiff, iColor Flex SLX LED luminaires have been used to create an illuminated wall running the length of the escalators linking the refurbished centre with a new development to the south. As well as being used to create a range of scenes and animated displays the illuminated wall encourages shoppers to move between the sections of the centre.
“LED technology is moving so fast. New innovations are emerging all the time in terms of light quality, fixtures but also integration into design – LEDs have opened up a whole new world of possibilities limited only by the imagination.”
Making a change
In line with sustainability strategies, shopping centres up and down the country have made great headway in reducing their energy usage. And for many, lighting has been a focus.
“In retail, 20-30 per cent of the energy bill is lighting-related, 70 per cent of which is inefficient,” says Easton. “Investing in energy efficient lighting such as LED technology is one of the easiest ways to cut cost and impact. LED lighting solutions are socially responsible, technologically advanced and pleasing to the eye.”
At Midsummer Place in Milton Keynes an annual saving of £24,000 was achieved with a reduction of 210 tonnes of CO2. Part of the strategy was to reduce lighting usage.
After business hours all mall and car park lights are turned off one hour after the centre closes, except when cleaning is taking place, and lighting on the Boulevard is turned to 25 per cent from one hour after closing time – a level considered sufficient for both cleaning and public access.
And earlier this year Manchester Arndale installed PIR sensors, which only activate lights if movement is detected, into all service road and back-of-house areas. Some meters are already recording a reduction of 25-30 per cent, inspiring centre management to roll out similar energy reduction programmes onto the malls in the coming months.
“For malls owned by investment companies and pension funds and with a CSR commitment to deliver to their shareholders, it’s inappropriate not to use LEDs where possible,” says Wraith.
Taylor agrees. “With CRC businesses will have to pay £16 of every tonne of carbon they produce. By 2020 that will rise to £20 per tonne. Minimising consumption wherever possible is going to become increasingly important.
“Twenty per cent of the world’s electricity is used for lighting. We’ve got to be more efficient. The cost of commodities has gone through the roof – look at the cost of energy in the last 10 years, it’s doubled and it’s only going to become more and more expensive.
“We’ve got to reduce all consumption of energy where possible. And with LEDs we have the luxury to do that.”
