A couple of weeks ago we had our new lighting system installed (see this post). In the warehouse areas we have put in “Brilliance” fittings, which come on only when someone is in the area and the natural light levels are too low. We have also had occupancy sensors installed in the toilets and changing rooms so that the lights switch themselves off automatically when no movement has been detected for more than a few minutes. This has worked very well and has solved the problem of lights being left on all day. Try as I might, I just could not get people to remember to switch the lights off as they leave the room. The final stage is to replace our T8 fluorescent tubes with T5 tubes. These use about half the energy of T8s, are just as bright and last 3 times longer so should generate a significant saving in terms of energy bills and maintenance costs. The new tubes can be retrofitted using a conversion kit so you don’t need to replace the entire light fitting which would be very expensive. Instead we are going through a rolling programme of changing all 177 fluorescent tubes in our buildings ourselves. By fitting a few of the tubes each day we hope that we’ll be able to replace all the tubes without employing an electrician and this will keep costs down further. It is time consuming and will take a while to implement, but once complete this project will cut our lighting bills in half and savings we make will mean that the project will pay for itself within 2 years!

All the new lights came from a company called Chalmor, a specialist lighting company.