Arizona State University, home to 80,000 students, faculty, and staff, joined Cree’s LED University earlier this year. The program recognizes universities around the world that have installed LED lighting fixtures on their campuses to save money on energy and maintenance costs and promote sustainability.

ASU began its retrofit by replacing 2,000 150-watt metal halide fixtures with 78-watt LED low bay fixtures in six parking structures across its Tempe campus. The LED low bay fixtures are going to decrease energy consumption by 1.5 million kilowatt-hours. According to the program, that’s the amount of emissions from 208 vehicles! The new LED fixtures are anticipated to last 50,000 hours, which is three times longer than the metal halide fixtures. The new, brighter lighting in the parking garages will help motorists keep an eye out for people walking through the garage and help pedestrians feel safer when retrieving their vehicles at night. ASU also replaced the incandescent downlights in the Sandra Day O’Connor rotunda with LED downlights. The new fixtures consume 85% less energy than the previous incandescent fixtures, and are estimated to last 50,000 hours.

ASU has been recognized as one of the “greenest” universities by The Princeton Review’s Green Rating Honor Roll. “Not only are they promoting environmentally conscious projects, but they are also helping to instill these principles in their students and lead other universities by example,” said Deb Lovig, LED programs manager at Cree. ASU is anticipating to save $127,000 from the parking garage LED retrofit, and we hope to see even more environmentally friendly changes from them and other universities in the future.