21st Century Lighting for South London Car Parks – the LED Solution

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 South London Car Parks – the LED Solution

Well-lit car parking areas are both safer and more pleasant spaces. No fumbling around to find the right key. No wishing that you had remembered to slip a small torch into your pocket. No more wondering what it is that you have just trodden in! But at South London Electricians, we appreciate that traditional car park lighting can be expensive which is why we offer you LED car park lighting.

Traditional car park lighting systems

External car park lighting is usually post-mounted and so it needs to be powerful. Traditionally, high intensity discharge (HID) lamps have been used in order to create the required brightness but they have a number of disadvantages – they consume a lot of power; they need to be switched on early in order to reach their operating brightness; they convert electricity into heat wasting a lot of money; they have a high carbon footprint and so on. Since a complete system draws large amounts of power, thick cabling is needed as well, increasing costs.

For covered car parking areas such as multi-story and underground, the lighting is fitted close to the roof. There is very little headroom so fluorescent lighting is traditionally installed. Whilst this is more energy efficient and gives a more even coverage than HID in confined spaces, the number of tubes required is large. If there is a mishap and a tube gets broken, or if south London vandals decide to attack, then you have the problem of glass to clean up and dispose of. Then there is the storage of spare tubes and starters to think about too.

All of these disadvantages can be overcome by switching to LED car park lighting.

The 21st century alternative – LED car park lighting

As LEDs have become more efficient and more powerful, it has become possible to create luminaires that cast sufficient light to be able to replace HID lamps for external car park lighting. LEDs are very directional so there is no need for a big bulky reflectors to focus the light down to where it is needed. This means that, for new installations, lighter and less costly supports are required. The light is available as soon as the units are switched on so you don’t waste time and electricity waiting for them to warm up.

We can also retrofit LED units to existing lighting posts which will keep your car park lighting conversion costs down. All of the LED installations we carry out fully comply with British Standards for car park lighting.

There are two big savings in the long term that make investment in LED lighting an attractive proposition if you run an exterior car park. Firstly, running costs are a fraction of traditional lighting systems, usually they will save at least 40% on your existing non-LED system. Secondly, HID lamps only have a couple of years life expectancy whereas LEDs have upwards of 5 years so you will slash maintenance costs.

For multi-storey and underground car park managers, LED offers an excellent alternative to fluorescent lighting. The quality of light is excellent and LED luminaires are flat and are perfect where headroom is very limited. If they are accidentally (or deliberately) hit, unlike with fluorescents, there is no glass to create a hazard.

So how do I get LED lighting installed on my car parking area?

If you are looking to update your car park lighting in Croydon, Bromley, Lewisham or elsewhere in South London, contact South London Electricians on 020 3199 9093 for a no-obligation chat about standards compliant energy efficient installations. Our team of fully qualified electricians are equipped to deal with car park lighting of all types and we are not just ‘bulb-changers’. We can advise and install underground and above ground cabling, cable protection and controls as well as the LED lighting system and its wiring.

 

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