Is Your Parking Lot Lighting Adequate?

There are many opinions as far as parking lot lighting is concerned. Many feel as if the lighting in a parking lot is sufficient if it simply exists, and others feel it should be very bright, and meet all of the needs of the people.

When considering an upgrade to your lighting system, there are many things to consider. For example: if your lighting has not been upgraded in many years, you may want to consider the five basic questions below, and then decide if you need to upgrade your lighting system:

  • Intensity of the lighting: how bright are your lights?
  • Uniformity of lighting: how consistent is the light level throughout the lighted area?
  • Color of lighting: how accurately does the lighting show colors?
  • Efficiency of lighting: how much light per watt of electricity does the lighting system give?
  • Lamp life: How long do the lamps last before they will have to be replaced?

If you follow the suggested list above, you will be well on your way to ensuring that your lighting is up to date, and safe for anyone who enters your parking lot. Following this list will ensure that your lighting meets all the needs of the people.

Many business choose to wait until the lighting is not working to replace them. This is not a wise idea. Updating your system with brighter lighting will ensure your parking lot is running smoothly and is at the ultimate level of safety for your staff, and customers.

Will Solar Wallpaper be The Key to Lighting Sustainability?

Solar panels and electric lights have been getting quite cozy over the past few years. Whether it’s highway lamps charged up during the daylight hours, or businesses who dedicate their solar arrays to keeping the interior lights on, a huge amount of renewable power is being spent to make sure we never have to deal with the dark. Of course, for businesses who are looking for new and innovative ways to keep the lights on, the answer may have come from a former Chinese furniture store.

Does Solar Wallpaper Offer Sustainability For Lighting?

Len Gao and Phillip Gao are a father and son who, for years, used their furniture business as a way to finance their solar power ambitions. The result,according to Sustainable Brands, is that their new business Sunflare has produced a product unlike anything else; solar wallpaper.

It may sound ridiculous, but it’s actually not. These solar panels lack the stiff, glass substrates found in traditional solar arrays, and they are significantly thinner. Which means that, if someone wished to, they could put these panels up as wallpaper. Perhaps in the sun room.

An Open Design That Welcomes, and Saves Energy Costs

With the ability to put solar panels up inside, businesses may start re-thinking their designs. After all, if you can put up a bunch of windows to let in natural light, then you’re saving costs, and generating electricity at the same time. And, if a business combines these subtle solar panels with efficient lighting systems, like light-emitting diodes, then it’s possible they may never need to pay to keep the lights on again.

How LED Lighting Will Benefit Your Business

As a business owner it is important to have good lighting around your store or warehouse. Many businesses have made the switch to LED lighting to not only save money, but also cut down on lighting maintenance. Below are 5 benefits to making LED lighting upgrades at your business.

1. Reliability: One of the main benefits of LED lighting is its reliability. This is attractive for both commercial and industrial businesses, as it means less time is spent changing out faulty lights. LED lamps have a life span of over 50,000 operating hours, which greatly reduces the amount of a time a business will spend on lighting maintenance.

2. Color Options: LED lights, unlike incandescent lights, are able to produce light in a wide range of color spectrum. These options allow business owners to set the tone in a given space, based on its lighting needs. These color temperatures include:

  • Warm White– This is the light that most people are familiar with, and is most commonly used for intimate locations such as restaurants or lounges.
  • Natural White– This shade is cooler than warm white, using more white than yellow. This light is best used for commercial applications, such as in offices.
  • Daylight White– This shade most closely resembles natural sunlight. Some locations that would benefit from daylight white are large areas such as conference rooms, classrooms, and retail stores.
  • Cool White– The best application for cool white light is in areas that require intense light, while offering high contrast. Some examples are jewelry stores or art galleries.

3. Brightness: Not only does LED lighting offer a wide range of color options, it is also brighter than traditional incandescent or florescent lighting. This is due to the fact that LED lights convert more energy into visible light, as opposed to heat.

4. Energy Savings: Since LED lighting emits more visible light, rather than producing heat, upgrading can greatly reduce your energy costs. Many businesses must leave lights on 24/7 for safety and security reasons, so keeping electricity costs down is key. Since very little heat is produced, it will also cut cooling costs during the summer months.

5. Upgrading is Simple: When it comes time to upgrade your current lighting system, LED lights can easily be designed and manufactured to fit your current specifications.

If you are looking for ways to cut costs for your business, while adding the appropriate color of light to any given space, it is time to make an upgrade to LED lighting.

Simple Summer Energy-Efficiency Tips

The heat is on and it is tough to keep your home cool while lowering your energy bill. These simple summer energy-efficiency tips will cool your home without the huge cooling bill.

Dial Down the Thermostat: Do not cool an empty home. Buy a programmable thermostat for your home and set the air conditioner to cool your home before arriving home. When you are only home 12 to 14 hours of the day there is no need to cool your home 24 hours

Cover the windows: When the sun comes through your windows it heats your home and fades your furnishings. Install curtains, shades or blinds to block the heat in the summer while protecting your flooring, paintings, and other furnishings.

Cool showers and laundry: Reduce your water heater temp or reduce the water temperatures of showers and laundry loads. Your clothing last longer with cooler water temperatures. A cooler, shorter shower make you more comfortable in the warmer temps.

Seal the heat out: Hot air leaks through the cracks and crevices around windows and doors. Add insulation around window and door frames where gaps allow heat entry. Remove the frame and push strips of insulation around the door and replace.

Close the gap around pipes: Your heating and cooling pipes with gaps require added insulation to keep cool air from escaping. Inspect all your furnace and air conditioner pipes and connectors. When a connector is loose, tighten and insulate around it.

Use fans to increase the cool: Ceiling and stand-up fans are less expensive to run. Set ceiling fans are to circulate air in an efficient way. Placing floor fans around your home increases airflow, increasing the cooling effect.

Grill or microwave your food: Using your grill keeps the heat outside. Microwave your food and reduce heat from cooking, that normally would warm your home.

Keep hydrated: Drink water, tea and other cool drinks to keep your core body temperature down. You will feel cooler when hydrated.

Power down: Use power strips to turn off appliances and electronics when not in use. Phantom energy increases your bill.

Spend more time outdoors: You have a patio, deck or porch to enjoy. Keep your thermostat down while you are outdoors, Use your air condition only when you are actually indoors.

Try these ten simple summer energy-efficiency tips and reduce the energy use and lower your energy bills.

High Productivity and Safety Start with Your Warehouse & Distribution Center Lighting

Thanks to the rise of online stores (e-commerce), distribution centers that cater to this industry are busier than ever. They take orders from online store owners, and ship the products directly to the stores’ customers. This means that a high volume of goods are shipped every day in the form of small orders. Pulling this off efficiently is essential to staying competitive, and many of these warehouses try to cope by using sophisticated productivity technology.

However, if you manage such an operation, you shouldn’t overlook the basics, such as warehouse lighting. Your lighting affects productivity in a number of ways. Poor lighting causes more product picking errors from the inventory shelves. This means that the wrong products are shipped to customers, which result in costly product returns and lost customers.

Poor lighting also leads to eyestrain and worker fatigue. This is particularly the case when using dim and flickering fluorescent lights. Worker fatigue hurts you in two ways. First, tired workers are less productive, which means your operation’s efficiency suffers. Second, tired workers make more mistakes, which compounds the product picking error problem.

Poor lighting also increases accidents, especially in warehouses bustling with activity. Busy people sharing dimly lit aisles with busy forklifts are accidents waiting to happen. Inefficient lighting also puts out a lot of waste heat. This extra heat can make your warehouse unbearable during the summer months, which will require expensive air conditioning to keep your workers productive.

Many companies are solving their warehouse & distribution center lighting problems with LED lighting. Its bright and uniformly distributed output solves the visibility and eye fatigue problem. Unlike fluorescent lighting, it doesn’t flicker. LED lights are also energy efficient. Lighting converts electricity into heat and light. Efficient lighting turns more of that electricity into light, and less into heat. This reduced heat output means you can keep your workers cool with less air conditioning in the summer. This results in less energy consumption by your air conditioners and your lighting. Another benefit is reduced maintenance costs thanks to the longer life of LED lighting.

In conclusion, LED lighting increases the efficiency of your distribution center, and saves money on energy consumption and maintenance. Before spending a fortune on sophisticated productivity technology, try using better lighting first.

New Lighting Technology for Energy-Efficiency

To achieve better illumination, industrial, manufacturing, and commercial sites are retrofitting old metal halide and high-pressure sodium lighting systems with next generation LED lighting. In the process, those sites are realizing substantial energy-efficiency benefits from those LED lighting systems.

An LED lighting system can generate the same or better luminosity as a traditional lighting systems while consuming less than half the electrical energy as a traditional system might require. The costs of retrofitting a traditional industrial or commercial lighting system with an LED system will be recouped in twelve to eighteen months after installation solely from reduced energy utilization. Next generation LED systems can operate for up to 50,000 hours continuously, and in some cases for more than 100,000 hours. This reduces maintenance and replacement costs as well.

Newer LED systems have also responded to the criticisms of degrading luminosity that had affected the first generation of LED’s. LED manufacturers have developed heat sink technology and other systems that reduce the thermal load on LED luminaires. Reduced thermal loads extend the life and performance of LED’s and keep fixtures operating at peak performance for several years.

Industrial and commercial sites that retrofit with LED systems will also experience secondary energy efficiency benefits from improved employee safety and performance. LED lighting is closer to natural lighting than traditional illumination systems. Employees are better able to distinguish fine detail and contrasting features in objects under LED light. These improvements lead to reduced employee fatigue and better overall operational efficiency.

 

Protect Your Customers, Protect Your Business

You want to protect your business, and you also want your customers to feel safe.  How can you accomplish that with a minimum of expense?  Parking lot lighting can go a long way toward all these ends when done properly.

Protect Your Business

Outside lights are a big deterrent to criminals.  The LAPD lists outdoor lighting as a way to protect your business, and the city of Charleston, SC calls lighting the “most cost-effective deterrent to crime.”  If the police are telling everyone that lighting is one of the best ways to keep criminals at bay, shouldn’t we listen?

Keep Your Customers Safe

Safety and security are not the same.  According to FacilitiesNet, Safety requires light to see tripping hazards, while security requires lighting that allows people to see faces, etc.  Both under-lighting and over-lighting increase certain risks.  That’s why it’s important to have a professional examine your space and work out the safest plan with a company that has nearly 10 years of experience.

Don’t Spend Too Much

Lighting is one of the least expensive options you have for adding security to your business.  Compared to a security company or lots of locks and bars on the windows, lighting is quite an appealing choice.  But what about running all those lights?  We use LED lights, which drastically cuts your costs.  Suddenly, you don’t have to worry about your wallet when it comes to lighting.

There are so many reasons to invest in outdoor lighting for your parking lot, we can only list a few here.

Are Fossil Fuels Going Green Too?

You can’t turn on the TV, or read a news blog, without hearing about how the world is going green. Solar power is off like a rocket, wind energy is increasingly popular, and reliable green solutions like anaerobic digesters and ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) are becoming more widely used. Fossil fuels aren’t giving up the fight, though. In fact, according to Vox, Net Power is working with a variety of big names in energy to prove that we can burn fossil fuels without releasing any greenhouse gas emissions.

How Does That Work?

When you think of a typical fossil fuel power plant, it’s a pretty basic setup. A fuel like coal or natural gas is burned to heat water, the water turns into steam, and the steam turns the turbines. The steam is then cooled somewhere else, and that’s when the greenhouse gases like CO2 are expelled into the atmosphere. In order to make that kind of design safe, a company would have to build a secondary plant whose sole purpose is capturing the steam, and filtering out all of the unwanted materials so they aren’t released into the atmosphere. That represents a huge drain on power, efficiency, and costs.

But what if you could build a greener plant, without the need for a secondary processing plant to catch and trap the emissions? That’s what Net Power is currently doing in North Carolina. It just broke ground on a 50 megawatt power plant that will act as a proof-of-concept to show that it’s possible to generate electricity on a large-scale by using natural gas, but without the associated greenhouse gas emissions.

The reason Net Power’s plant should be able to accomplish this feat, while also maintaining as much as 59 percent efficiency, is its unique design. It uses pure oxygen instead of air, a liquid turbine instead of a steam one, and it keeps the CO2 in liquid form, where it can be easily contained. Additionally, these plants use smaller components, and take up a lot less space.

But They’re Still Burning Fossil Fuels

The important point not to lose sight of is that Net Power’s plants still use fossil fuels. Yes, they’re more efficient, and they’re trapping their emissions so they won’t harm the atmosphere, but unless we suddenly find something we can do with all that liquid CO2, then they’re just delaying the inevitable need for green power.

Which is why the technology should be looked at as a transitional one.

If inefficient power plants belching emissions into the atmosphere could be streamlined, and remade into more environmentally friendly power plants, then it would be a step in the right direction. Not only that, but they would buy time for green resources to step up and take the burden from fossil fuels. Rather than going cold turkey from natural gas and coal, the world would be using a kind of fossil fuel patch to step down its needs. Something that these more advanced designs could provide, if we use them as stepping-stones between where we are, and where we need to be.

Three Reasons to Invest in LED Lighting for Your Emergency Lights

Emergency lighting comes in many forms, but few compare to LED lighting for its benefits and features. If you’ve been considering LED lighting but haven’t decided yet, here are three key reasons why you may want to take the leap.

LED Lights Dissipate Heat – Many people mistakenly believe that LED lights are cool because they don’t produce any heat. The truth is, every light generates heat. The difference in LED lights is that they dissipate that heat so that the lights don’t heat up. This makes them ideal for emergency lighting, because they won’t create hot spots on the lens covers of the lights or add significant heat to a building that has no active cooling system running.

LED Lights Are Energy Efficient – LED light production is measured according to how much light they emit per watt of power consumed, also referred to as lumens per watt. Most LED lighting produces more light per watt than a traditional compact fluorescent bulb. When it comes to emergency lighting, the more light you can get on limited power, the better.

LED Lights Burn Out Gradually – LED light bulbs have a longer lifespan than traditional light bulbs. Like all bulbs, though, they will burn out eventually. Unlike standard bulbs, LED lights don’t burn out at once. They fade gradually, giving you a chance to identify a failing light before you’re left in the dark. This is important for emergency lights, because the last thing you want is emergency lighting failing all at once when a bulb burns out.

LED Lighting And Daylight Savings Time

Daylight Savings Time is in full effect. Some people enjoy this time of the year because the extra hour of sleep. However, others are never thrilled about seeing nightfall come quickly. This change will have an impact on your ability to have the outdoor lighting you need.

Your lighting, or lack thereof, can help or hurt your business. Many people do not like shopping at stores or walking through parking lots when it is dark. The right mixture of lights can highlight your business, hospital, parking lot, etc. You do not have to flood your parking lot or the outside walkway with lights that are too bright and a little annoying.

You can use lights that you can place along your walkway. This will give your customers and employees enough light, and it will also help them see where they are going during the dark evenings and nights. There are several LED lighting options for you to choose from, including solar lights. When you use solar lighting, you do not have to worry about plugging and unplugging lights or buying replacement batteries.

It does not matter what type of lights you will choose to put outside, you will want to make sure the lights fit the style of your business. You will also want to make sure the lights are subtle. No one will be hesitant from navigating from your walkway or parking lot during the dark.