Award-winning LED lighting project slashes energy bills

With the help of award-winning lighting manufacturer, MHA Lighting, three companies with offices in Catalina Property Services' St. Mary’s Court, a 36,000 square foot commercial building in Douglas, are significantly reducing their lighting energy consumption – savings are estimated to exceed £300,000 and 850 Tonnes of Co2.

The project recently scooped the ‘Best Practice in the Private Sector’ category in the Isle of Man’s Energy Awards 2013. The awards acknowledge the achievements of the Isle of Man businesses and public sector organisations that are reducing their energy consumption and improving efficiency.

With its low energy luminaires and proven ability to design bespoke, precision lighting solutions – MHA Lighting was chosen to replace all the existing fluorescent fittings in the St. Mary’s Court offices and lobby areas of Charlemagne Capital (IOM) Ltd, Nedbank Private Wealth Ltd and Tristao Services Ltd.

Catalina Property Services, said: “After discussions with our residents about rising electricity costs, increased pressures to reduce carbon emissions and ways to improve light levels in our building – we sought a lighting supplier who could deliver on our strict brief:

“To find a lighting solution that would improve light quality for our leaseholders, whilst significantly reducing St. Mary’s Court’s energy consumption and carbon footprint.”

After meticulously investigating and researching various fittings from different suppliers to find the optimal light solution, MHA Lighting’s TiLites were chosen that supplied 80CRI and 4000 kelvin colour temperature.

This particular combination can significantly enhance the working environment, which is also known to aid concentration – contributing to a greater feeling of wellbeing amongst the staff.

The project saw a total of 227 award-winning TiLite (TL) luminaires installed in the offices and lobby areas of the three companies. This included 160 TL30/700, 53 TL24/700, and 14 TL20 fittings.

This has reduced combined annual lighting energy consumption at St. Mary’s Court from, 153,925kW/h (annual cost of £20,780) to just 55,053kW/h. Mutual annual energy bills have therefore been reduced to an average of just £7,432 per annum.

Through their low-energy LED Luminaires, MHA Lighting was also able to achieve a significant reduction in Co2 production for the offices, equating to product lifetime Co2 savings of 853 tonnes (an average of 55 tonnes per year).

Due to the lighting system’s design and high-reliability, the units also extremely low maintenance and will run for 60,000 hours of continuous use. With Charlemagne Capital’s 14, Nedbank Private Wealth’s 15 and Tristao Services’ 13 hour a day operations – the lights will not need replacing for 16, 15 and 18 years respectively.

This makes for additional savings on maintenance costs of £56,382 over the products’ lifetime – bringing total lifetime savings to £310,737.