Tesco helps tackle climate change by adopting Philips ECS Lighting Control Solutions
10-12-2008 |
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Royal Philips Electronics’ (NYSE:PHG, AEX:PHI),working in partnership with Tesco, has provided an energy efficient lighting control system offering impressive savings of £4M across 140 of its stores.
By employing the Philips ECS LMM lighting management system, Tesco can not only maximise potential savings by applied lighting control techniques but can do so without compromise to light quality, a vital component to any retail outlet.
Environmental Impact
With more than 2,100 stores, Tesco is the largest food retailer in the United Kingdom offering 4 main store formats tailored to customers needs. Of these Tesco Extra, which first opened in 1997, has proved extremely popular. Testament to its increasing importance to Tesco’s portfolio is its ever widening range of food lines and non food products from electrical goods through to homewares and health and beauty.
However, providing a vast array of goods and services is not enough these days. Social and environmental concerns now influence how companies are perceived by customers and stakeholders alike. Tesco has long since embraced its environmental responsibility, leading by example to reduce any negative impacts that its business operations may have on the wider ecological and social community.
This, however, has to be balanced against its customer promise to deliver great value in a store environment which is pleasant to shop in. Embracing these challenges, Tesco’s energy specialist team actively seeks out initiatives which support these criteria.
Open to how a lighting management system could help here, the LMM system was successfully trialled and approved by Tesco’s Centre of Excellence. This then allowed a roll out programme to go ahead between February and July this year.
Better Lighting for Less
Indeed, lighting contributes about 20% of the energy bill. So, any savings gained here can ultimately be channelled back into the business for the benefit of the customer and into investing for the future. In simple terms, better lighting that costs less.
With long-term targets to halve carbon emissions in all its existing stores by 2020, Tesco were therefore keen to harness the benefits the Philips ECS LMM control system could offer. As Ray Porter, Engineering Delivery Manager for Tesco states, “ With the replacement of the current high bay lighting installation across 46 of our larger stores, we were able to incorporate the LMM system into the lighting scheme thereby maximising the significant energy savings it offered.”
Thus, Tesco have instigated a flexible networked lighting control and management programme which could be easily operated via its internet system. A key benefit to the system is that once the new luminaires are commissioned and linked to an area controller, this in turn can be connected to one central point. Should any future alterations be necessary as a result of changes to store redesign or layout, these can be done via the Light Manager software package allowing screen based flexibility. This remote connectivity also gives potential for monitoring of the lighting system if required.
The majority of Tesco’s larger stores have been designed with vast glass panels to allow maximum daylight on to the sales floor. Added to this, many display gondolas and freezer cabinets have their own local lighting, which makes a significant contribution to the adjacent aisle. These elements can now be optimised by adoption of the LMM lighting control programme.
Two Fold Approach
Two approaches were taken to accommodate both 24 hour and non 24 hour Extra stores. Essentially across all stores, however, it was important to provide an efficient and comfortable “blanket of light“ throughout the store maximising the daylight available. The decision was, therefore, taken to deploy automatic dimming, linking the lighting directly to trading hours and external natural light levels
In practical terms this meant that for the round the clock outlets, the average ambient lighting levels went down from 1200 lux to 900 lux for week day trading hours whilst for night trading this was dimmed still further from 900 to 500 lux. In addition, during stock replenishment times, typically carried out on Saturday and Sunday nights, the lighting was dimmed from 500 to 300 lux.
Further gains were also made by deploying the concept of “energy harvesting” for the first hour of store trading. Here, it was found that light levels could be maintained at a lower lux level before rising to the prescribed norm without detriment to business operations. Specific use was also made of “daylight harvesting” by controlling the luminaires above the cash tills located nearest to the glass window panels. Thus, Tesco can take advantage of the free natural daylight that pours in through the window automatically dimming the luminaires within the area so that a constant level of light is maintained in the working space. Indeed, the luminaires can be programmed to be switched off altogether as daylight takes over. For the non 24 hour stores similar principles were applied. However, for restocking activity lux levels were set at 300 lux
Without doubt, employing such initiatives as automatic dimming will allow Tesco to achieve its ambitious energy reduction targets, setting an example to us all.
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