Safer Lighting for Parking Garages

Consider the impression that your business creates when its customers or clients drive into a poorly-lit parking lot. Your customers will feel uncomfortable with dark spot and shadows in your lot and will rush to get into a better-lit location. When the customer leaves, he or she might feel equally unsettled by the prospect of walking through dimly-lit rows of cars. Your business can make its customers feel safer and more at ease while simultaneously saving money and improving customer safety by installing modern LED lighting in its parking facilities.

The existing metal halide or high-pressure sodium lighting fixtures in your lot are effective for good illumination in their immediate vicinities, but that illumination is uneven across large areas that are typical in parking lots. LED parking lot lighting gives you unparalleled control over the distribution of lighting in your lot, regardless of whether the lot is open or a multi-tiered parking structure. You might try to over-light your lot with older lighting technology, but doing so will inevitably affect your neighbors and add to lighting pollution.

Further, your existing lighting technology is wasting money, both in terms of operating capital and maintenance. LED parking lot lighting fixtures can generate the same or better illumination as traditional outdoor lighting with less than half of the electrical energy input. You will see immediate benefits from LED parking lot lights in terms of lower electricity utility bills. LED parking lot lights also continue to generate high quality light for up to 50,000 or more hours of use. Your parking lot lighting maintenance costs will also go down when you install safer LED parking lot lighting.

Perhaps most critically, your customers and clients will appreciate your well-lit parking lot either with a conscious feeling of safety as they move from their vehicles and into your business, or subconsciously with an improved sense of security as they are able to see all areas of your lot with no shadows or dark spots where imagined dangers might be lurking.

Data Center Efficiency: Three Benefits of an LED Commercial Lighting Retrofit

A data center processes, stores, and distributes data for a single organization or many organizations. It is filled with computer servers that together, consume considerable power. The servers also produce considerable heat, which in turn requires air conditioning.

This adds up to a costly power bill. Data centers work to minimize power consumption by consolidating the work loads of its servers, eliminating unnecessary computing, and using more efficient servers. Some data centers have reduced air conditioning power consumption by increasing their room temperatures by several degrees. However, there is still more room for improvement by doing a commercial lighting retrofit with LEDs. Here are three reasons for this:

  • LEDs consume less power. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a 12 watt LED light puts out the same lighting as a 15 watt CFL light or a 60 watt incandescent light. This amounts to a 20% and 80% power reduction respectively. In addition, an LED light outperforms an energy-saving incandescent light by 72%.
  • LEDs produce less heat. This is a consequence of its higher energy efficiency, since energy not converted to light becomes waste heat. Less heat production from LEDs places a smaller load on air conditioning, which saves on AC power consumption.
  • LEDs can be turned on and off without a warm-up period and are easily dimmed. LEDs are compatible with smart control systems that use motion sensors to turn on lighting when someone enters a room, and turn off lighting when no one is present. It can be used with external lighting sensors that adjust LED brightness according to ambient light coming in from windows.

Summarizing, LEDs themselves consume less power, their reduced heat output means your AC system consumes less power, and you can easily use them more efficiently with automation technology.

The Many Benefits of Motion Activated LED Lighting

LEDs are ideally suited for use with motion sensor technology. And while there are many benefits and uses of LED lighting in business settings, combining them with motion sensors expands the possibilities further. Here are five benefits:

Saves Energy

If you are already using energy-efficient LED lighting, why not get more of a good thing by having them turn off automatically when no one is using a room, and switch on when people enter? LEDs require no warm up time and have no problems with being turned on and off as people go in and out of a work area. Another benefit is there is no need for you or an employee to make sure the lights are off at the end of the day.

Increases Convenience

The problem with light switches is you have to find them in a dark room. This is especially difficult for visitors or employees unfamiliar with the room. Sometimes the elusive switches are inside the room next to the door somewhere, and sometimes they’re outside. The problem is yet more awkward when a person entering a dark room is using both hands to carry something. These problems go away with LED lighting activated with motion sensors.

Improves Safety

One way to ensure that stairwells are well-lit when people use them is leaving their lights on all the time. The same is true for outside walkways and parking lots. However, motion activated LED lighting ensures that people can watch their step where they need to while saving energy as well.

Increases the Longevity of Your Lights

Although many LEDs last 50,000 hours, turning them off when not needed further increases their working life. This means money is saved on the LED replacements and on the installation labor.

Gets Customer Attention in Retail Stores

If you want to ensure that customers notice specific product displays, motion activated lighting of the display will certainly get their attention. In fact, it will do a better job than using signs with large bold lettering, to which the public has become blind.

The above listing is just a sampling of the many benefits of LED lighting when used with motion detectors.