The Best Lighting for South London Cold Stores
If you run a cold store in South London, you may well be looking at ways in which to save money to make your business more profitable. But did you know that simply changing to LED lighting could improve your finances directly and indirectly?
What is LED lighting?
An LED (Light Emitting Diode) is an electrical component that produces light when an electrical current passes through it. Unlike conventional lighting which converts the electricity into heat to produce light, the electricity is converted directly into light. This means that it is more efficient and you get a lot more light from your electricity. But whilst it doesn’t rely on heat to produce the light, inevitably, some heat is produced, but nowhere near as much as with conventional lighting.
The advantages of LED lighting to cold store owners
Firstly, there is an immediate reduction in operating costs, in fact, with the correct control systems installed, it is possible to see an 80% reduction in your lighting bill from day 1. There are long term reductions in operating costs too. LED lighting units are designed to last upwards of 10 years, beating the expected 2 years lifetime of conventional lighting. LED’s are perfect for cold stores as they do in fact last longer in cold conditions than warm, the opposite to traditional lighting. Once fitted, it will be a long time before you need to send out your maintenance crew (or buy in a contractor) to replace failed or dim lighting.
The easiest way to save energy is to turn off equipment. Intuitively, we know it is wasteful to leave the lights on. Yet, in cold storage facilities this is normal procedure – conventional lighting is left on day-in day-out. Why? In low temperature situations, fluorescent lights have a long warm-up period and HID lighting must cool down and warm up when switched on and off. Because of the inevitable productivity losses due to these wait times with traditional lighting sources, there has never really been a viable option to constantly leaving the lights on – until now of course.
The re-strike time of LED lighting is seconds rather than the usual 6 – 10 minutes of conventional lighting meaning that the lights in your south London cold storage facility can be off when not needed and be on, at full brightness, only when they are needed. If attached to a motion sensor, the lights can come on immediately that someone enters the store and be programmed to switch off a set time after they leave.
Conventional lighting produces a lot more heat than do LED lighting units. This heat needs to be removed by the refrigeration system so anything that lowers the heat load in your cold store will help. The refrigeration equipment will not need to work as hard as with outdated lighting systems and therefore maintenance costs and running costs are both significantly reduced.
So it makes perfect sense to convert your cold store lighting to state-of-the-art LED lighting, for more advice and a quote, contact us on 07956 523316.
