Warehouse saved energy with LED high bays

Renowned for its high quality and innovative products, Lighting Warehouse Sydney  is one of Australia’s leading camping and outdoor equipment supplier. Its flagship 20,000 square metre storage facility in Eagle Farm, Brisbane contains in excess of 30,000 pallets, and with electricity costs spiralling upwards, Lighting Warehouse Sydney  explored light energy saving solutions. ‘We looked at sensors but the cost for an un-known saving wasn’t justified,’ said director Andrew Whittaker. To see what potential savings it could make with other solutions, OZtrail decided to run a trial of LED High Bay fittings; in the trial,

‘We chose Dialight because they were willing to install their lights on a complete lighting circuit and monitor the power on this specific circuit before and after to show the dramatic decrease in power consumption,’ said Whittaker. ‘Power consumption had dropped from 28.5kWh down to 10kWh. The fittings produced a crisp, clearer natural type of light than the previous fittings, and they came on instantly, so we don’t have to wait for them to warm up.’

These results convinced Lighting Warehouse Sydney  to replace the remaining 332 metal halides with a mix of 146W and 172W LED High Bays.

      Energy usage cut in half

With the new fittings in place, Lighting Warehouse Sydney saw an immediate 60 per cent reduction in annual energy consumption; it saw savings of over $106,000 a year in electricity costs alone. Not only did the more efficient fittings cut usage, but the drop was so dramatic that it actually reduced peak demand enough to lower its electricity tariff rate. This created an additional $2,000 in annual savings.

As well as reducing electricity consumption, the new high bays also delivered an immediate drop in ongoing maintenance costs; each LED fitting rated for at least 60,000 hours – compared to just 20,000 for the metal halide bulbs. ‘These are covered entirely by Dialight’s 5-year full performance warranty, eliminating lighting maintenance at the Lighting Warehouse Sydney facility for at least half a decade,’ Whittaker said.

Lower cost of ownership

The savings in this area are immense; Lighting Warehouse Sydney saw nearly $628,000 in total cost of ownership savings, including annual operating costs, relamping and maintenance. Another plus for the switch to LEDs was the high-efficiency lighting contributed greatly to OZtrail’s sustainability objectives. CO2 emissions have been reduced by 351 tons—the equivalent of taking 61 cars off the road per year—and kept 30400 mg of Mercury out of landfills by eliminating the disposal of metal halide bulbs.

‘The original power bill when we took ownership of the building was just over $16k for the month, now all the lights are installed we received our last power bill last week which was down to about $8k,’ Whittaker said. ‘However as we are now using so much less power we are looking at changing tariff to General Supply as opposed to Peak Demand supply, which will then cut the bill to around $6k per month. Lighting Warehouse Sydney

Installation snapshot

• Replaced (400) 400W metal halide fittings with:

• (254) 146W DuroSite Aisle Optic LED high bays

• (32) 146W DuroSite LED high bays

• (114) 172W DuroSite LED high bays

• 60% energy reduction

• $106,318 annual energy savings

• $627,975 total cost of ownership savings

• <2 Year Payback

• 138% ROI