5 Simple Tips to Improve Energy-Efficiency in Your Business

As a business owner, you want to do everything you can to save money while ensuring your employees and customers have what they need. One of the ways that you can do this is by switching to energy-efficient lighting. Below are five tips that you can use to do this.

Switch to LED

LED bulbs are a lot more energy efficient than regular light bulbs. They use 50% less energy than typical light bulbs, and they last a lot longer, which is also much better for the environment. In addition, they give off a lot less heat, so this means you don’t have to run the air conditioning as much.

Take Advantage of Natural Light

If your business has large windows or skylights, take advantage of sunny days and you will see that your electricity bills are going down. When you are using the sunshine rather than lights, you are using a lot less energy.

Add Sensors & Controls

Lighting sensors and controls will help you save money by turning the lights off automatically when you are not using them. Advanced controls offer daylight harvesting, zone control, task tuning, dimming, temperature/humidity and energy monitoring.

Choose the Right Light for the Task

Match your lights to your tasks. LED is available in a lot of styles and you can use them anywhere. Simply find the right type of lighting for the area and you’ll save money.

These are just five quick and easy ways that you can save money with your lighting solutions in your business. Making your business energy efficient with lighting is a simple and quick way that you can cut costs without affecting your customers’ experience or your employees’ work. Want to know more? Contact us today and let us tell you how we can help.

LED and Controls for Manufacturing

In today’s competitive manufacturing world reducing costs can be the difference between profit and loss. Lighting is one of the least expensive ways to trim costs. As well as trimming costs lighting has been proven to boost worker morale and bring a positive mood into your space. Relumination is committed to helping commercial and industrial businesses reduce overhead costs, save electricity, minimize facilities management expenses, and decreasing our environmental footprint. Here is how we can help with LED and controls for manufacturing.

Benefits Of Manufacturing Lighting Solutions

– Reduced lighting  electricity and maintenance costs

– Improved lighting colors, levels, consistency and layout leading to increased productivity

– Longer fixture/lamp life span resulting in no production shut down

– Zero lost workdays to due to improved safety

– Reduces production turn-backs/mistakes

Why Led Is Better For Manufacturing Facilities

– Outdated incandescent or fluorescent fixtures won’t provide proper lighting

– LED uses a fraction of the power when compared to traditional bulbs making them energy efficient

– The lifespan of a LED bulb is up to 10,000 hours

– LED generates less heat, making it easier to keep a large facility cooler

– LED is durable and can hold up in a most workplace environments

Why Controls Help Manufacturing Facilities

– Dimming controls

– Programmable control zoning

– Sequence of operations

– Motion sensing

– Humidity/Temperature monitoring

– Data collection

Using LED paired with controls in your manufacturing building will benefit your budget, productivity, and employees.  LED will help take your lighting to the next level and reduce overall maintenance and operating costs. You have control over the rest of your manufacturing building and having control over your lights is important too.

Don’t just take our word for it. Check out some of our previous manufacturing projects to see for yourself how we can take your building to the next level. Contact us today to learn more about LED and lighting controls in your manufacturing building.

 

 

How To Use IoT Controls To Aid Social Distancing In Your Facility

A major issue that businesses and workplaces are facing today is encouraging its workers to abide by social distancing guidelines. In larger facilities, this is not always easy to monitor and can be overwhelming. However, an LED lighting system that utilizes IoT (Internet of Things) technology can put this task at your fingertips and eliminate the need to tour your facility. This technology monitors the people and assets in your facility and reports back to you in real time, and also allows for LED lighting adjustments for worker safety. IoT controls can also make it easier for your employees to meet social distancing guidelines and stay safe.

Social Distancing Controls

Employee Location Monitoring – IoT applications are able to track the location of people in your facility and uses an advanced algorithm to provide accurate data by the room. Employees and others wear tags for tracking purposes which are detected by smart sensors. You can also use these applications to replay data and see where people have been in the past, and whether they have broken any social distancing guidelines. Searches and alerts are also available.

Occupancy Tracking – Other IoT applications make use of location tracking to calculate the occupancy of a specific room or area in your facility. Sensor networks are able to track the movement of your employees and provide accurate views of occupancy in real-time, highlighting problem areas where social distancing isn’t (or cannot be) practiced. These IoT applications can also show where employees tend to congregate over time.

Facility Insight – The ability to sense the lighting levels and occupancy for an entire facility will reveal hidden problem areas and reduce human error. Real-time and historical data is made available in one central location. Monitoring the environment in your facility, or multiple facilities is vital to understanding worker behavior. HVAC failures and other equipment failures can cause workers to abandon social distancing and congregate in more comfortable areas, and alarms can be used to alert you to potential problems before this occurs.

Safety Controls

Advanced Lighting Controls – A wireless IoT system will allow you to easily adjust lighting levels by room and area not only to enhance worker comfort and safety but to encourage workers to practice social distancing in problem areas. Different lighting profiles, made by collecting data on employee movement and occupancy, can be configured by area throughout an entire Smart Building and adjusted accordingly throughout the day.

Fine Tuning – Other IoT apps can allow for occupancy sensing and adjust light levels automatically, and can be used to program the lighting system to dim a problem area progressively during high-occupancy times. These functions can be customized room by room for easy management of social distancing and can be done from virtually any mobile device.

Conclusion

The current health crisis is one that large facilities have never seen before and innovative solutions are needed to protect worker safety, health, and productivity. Using an IoT system with your LED lighting will make monitoring social distancing manageable and offer innovative solutions for enforcing worker safety. If you have questions or need more information on how an IoT system can help you, be sure to contact us.

Top 3 Reasons to Upgrade Your Lighting

Business owners and building managers alike have been waging a war against lower-efficiency facility lighting for generations. Now, with LED lighting more accessible and affordable than ever, facility managers are faced with the question not only of replacing their out-of-date lighting systems, but the question of why they haven’t pulled the trigger on the energy-saving solution yet. With cost-saving effects, lower rates of failure and therefore lower maintenance costs, and better working conditions, business owners are going to want to strongly consider upgrading to energy-efficient LED lighting sooner rather than later.

Save Money on Utility Bills

It’s a well-known fact that LED light bulbs use considerably less energy than their fluorescent counterparts. These energy savings, when spread over an entire facility’s lighting system, could save thousands of dollars over the course of a year. Not only do these lamps save on the utility bill, but utility companies offer rebates simply for switching to LED systems. Business owners would be wise to consider these utility rebates in addition to energy bill savings.

Lower Rate of Failure

Not only do LED lights offer the obvious energy-efficient savings on utility bills, but they also offer energy efficient savings in terms of lower maintenance costs and labor requirements. LED lights last on average, years longer than traditional lighting and therefore present fewer needs for maintenance, replacement, and quality-control measures.

High Quality Lighting Equals Good Working Conditions

Lighting conditions and quality of work go hand-in-hand when it comes to commercial facilities. Business owners and building managers are wise to consider the best and most energy-efficient lighting solutions possible in order to provide safe and productive working conditions for their team. LED lights provide quiet, consistent lighting solutions, allowing employees to focus on the task at hand.

Overall, the energy-efficient benefits of LED have long outweighed their traditional lighting predecessors. So, as a business owner or building manager, the next question isn’t whether to make the switch but rather when is the best time? Contact us to make the switch today!

Choosing Quality LED Fixtures for Your Business

As with many business decisions, selecting the best LED fixtures for your business requires a careful weighing of cost against quality, value, and functionality. The wealth of choices and options available can seem overwhelming, and the decision hard to make without expertise in lighting. Here are some suggestions for examining your options.

How to Evaluate LED Fixtures

What should you look for when selecting LED fixtures? Keeping the lights on is, of course, essential, and is a significant cost of running your business, so you’ll want to know how to evaluate available options. Some aspects of LED fixtures to consider include:

  • Maintenance – LED fixtures have a dramatically longer lifespan than traditional incandescent or fluorescent lighting, at up to 250,000 hours. They also do not require ballasts, so you will see savings in the frequency of replacing bulbs as well as in not having to replace worn out ballasts. In addition, because LED lighting doesn’t “burn out” in the traditional sense, you won’t see sudden outages, but can schedule bulb replacement more flexibly.
  • Energy Consumption & Efficiency – It’s no secret that LED fixtures consume far less energy than traditional lighting. Understanding comparative energy consumption of traditional versus LED lighting can clarify potential savings.
  • Lighting Controls – Integrated lighting controls can be a key driver in lowering lighting expenses with features such as automated dimming and daylight and activity sensors. Lighting controls can provide substantial additional value in safety, ambience, and in employee and customer satisfaction.
  • Environmental Considerations – Do you have special environmental considerations for LED lighting? These could include high- or low-temperature spaces, indoor or outdoor settings, or moisture exposure. LED lighting, for example, is not cold-sensitive as fluorescent lighting can be.

What to Look for in Quality LED Fixtures

When you’re evaluating LED lighting solutions, here are some important specifications to note.

  • Lumens per Watt – Lumens measure how bright a bulb is, while watts show the power consumption of a bulb.  The measure of lumens per watt, indicates how efficient a bulb is.    Lumens per watt will vary depending on how a bulb makes light (incandescent, fluorescent, LED, etc.), the quality of materials used to make it, and how much energy is wasted as heat rather than light output. With traditional lighting, more watts = brighter light, so more electricity is needed to create brighter light. With LED lighting, the correlation is less direct. As an example, a 100w incandescent bulb has an efficiency of 16 lumens per watt, a 26w CFL bulb rates 61 lumens per watt, and a 22w LED bulb is most efficient at 73 lumens per watt.
  • Warranty – As with any smart business decision, be sure to consider warranties on parts and labor so you’re not left in the lurch if a problem arises.
  • L70 (LED Lifetime) Ratings – With traditional lighting, bulbs either emit light or don’t (they burn out). LED lighting will very slowly decrease in brightness over time. In general, it’s best to replace LED lighting when it has lost 30% of its brightness — that is, when it’s producing 70% of its original lumens. That 70% level is the L70 rating of an LED bulb.  For example, an LED bulb with an L70 or LED Lifetime rating of 50,000 hours means that it can be on for a minimum of 50,000 hours before it will have lost 30% of its brightness.
  • Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) – The visual temperature of lighting, measured in Kelvins,  indicates where the color of the light falls between cool, bluish-white and warm, golden light. Bright, cool light will generally be better suited to a warehouse or outdoor situation while warmer light will usually work best in a restaurant, hotel, or office.  Areas within a facility may also require different temperatures of light.
  • Motion Sensors – Motion sensors allow you to automate whether lights are on, and even how bright they are, depending on activity. You may want to have lighting that comes on automatically when someone enters a conference room or a particular warehouse area, for example. Because LED lighting doesn’t require warm-up time to come to full brightness, lights can come on quickly, as needed.
  • Dimming – Dimmable fixtures can be very useful in situations where constant light is needed but only active areas require the brightest light. Automatic and even manual dimming can dramatically reduce lighting costs by lowering usage in unneeded spaces.
  • Advanced Controls – various capabilities of a lighting control systems including, but not limited to, daylight harvesting, scheduling, task tuning, energy usage reporting, humidity/temperature monitoring. Advanced controls allow a broad or granular bird’s eye view allowing more specific controls for needs of the space.
  • Type of Fixture – The types of LED lighting fixtures available are nearly endless, and can be chosen and mounted to suit any need and environmental considerations. High bay lights can illuminate large warehouse areas, linear lighting can work well in aisles, troffer lights are common in offices and schools.

How to Compare Competitor Products

With so many options to consider when evaluating LED lighting choices, you will need to compare options carefully.

  • Credibility and Experience – Are the fixtures produced by a company with experience in the field and a solid reputation?
  • Value – The upfront cost should not be your only consideration. Cheaper LED lighting will often fail to achieve its stated L70 rating.
  • Up to Date – If you want to take advantage of the latest advances in integrated lighting control and automation, you’ll need to select compatible products.
  • Compliance – The Federal Energy Management Program has efficiency requirements for some commercial and industrial LED lighting. Other regulations may also be applicable. Ensure your lighting and contractor are knowledgeable and in compliance with such requirements.

The experienced team at Relumination is ready to help you choose the best LED lighting for your business, and apply our years of expertise and high standard of service from needs analysis through project completion, service, and support. Contact us today to see how we can work together for a brighter future for your business.

Reasons to Upgrade Facility Lighting

As a decision maker, you know that every decision you make for your business requires a thoughtful consideration of the costs and benefits involved. Here we will show that not only is a retrofit eco-friendly, safe, and cost effective in the long term, it is a great way to present a bright, clean, and contemporary look to everyone who enters your space.

Retrofitting will Save You Money

While the upfront cost of a retrofit may seem overwhelming, in the long term you will keep more of the profits you make because your overhead (lighting) will cost less. A cost benefit analysis of switching from fluorescent lighting to LED was done at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. They found that switching to LED would save them over $930,000 cumulatively over the course of 10 years.  The analysis shows that the savings in energy costs far outweighs the higher expense of the fixtures themselves. They also note that because LED generates far less heat, during warmer months and in warmer climates the cost of cooling is lowered.

Retrofitting Makes Your Space Safer

LED is solid state, which means there are no harmful gases to worry about. And because they are constructed from plastic, they won’t shatter into sharp shards of glass. And as previously stated they produce very little heat, so handling them after use will not burn bare skin. In addition, the light produced by LED is easier on the eyes and creates less lighting fatigue than fluorescent lights. As noted in the SWOSU analysis, this is due to their low emission of infrared light and zero emission of ultraviolet light.  All this adds up to a safer environment for your employees and customers.

Retrofitting is Better for the Environment

Less electricity used means less fossil fuels burned which means less carbon emissions. We all want to lower our carbon footprint and slow the rate of global climate change. While retrofitting your lighting may not be the most drastic green action you can make, it is among the lowest cost-of-entry steps you can take into a more carbon-neutral footprint.

Modern Fixtures for a Modern World

LEDs are bright, rich in color variety and send a message that your business is forward-thinking and environmentally conscious. When someone steps into your space, they should feel welcomed and safe. Bright, warm lighting is an excellent way to make your business more inviting. Cooler lights show a product’s true colors when on display. There are attractive solutions available for every need and purpose your business has.  And a well lit space makes people feel safer; they can see who they are with, what they are doing, and where they are more clearly.

In short, LED lighting technology is an easy win for everyone.

For more information on how to retrofit the lighting in your business contact us.

 

How to Use Lights to Encourage Social Distancing

One of the challenges that facilities face during the COVID-19 pandemic is how to monitor the health and safety of their employees. One of the biggest prevention measures for combating COVID-19 is the act of social distancing and wearing proper protective equipment. An advanced network lighting control system can help you control and monitor social distancing for your employees. This can be done by using a variety of methods from setting up lighting schedules for specific zones to monitoring auxiliary spaces.

Encouraging social distancing

People generally want to do the right thing when it comes to social distancing but they also need a little guidance on how best to accomplish that. By using what you have on hand you can set guidelines and boundaries for employees to clearly follow. For example, you can set the lights in a pattern that sets employees apart. This way they know that as long as they’re in a lighted area, they are practicing proper social distancing.

This may also mean switching things around on the warehouse floor to accommodate but your employee’s health and wellness during these times are worth it.

Controls for Safety

Task Tuning – With the proper lighting system the ability to customize and manage precise lighting parameters on individual fixtures, or override entire groups quickly and easily through the mobile and web applications. The ability to set up schedules and zones can be used to identify areas that may be restricted during certain times throughout the day.

Event-Based Alerts – Configure value-based thresholds for any single variable (such as temperature, relative humidity, etc.), and receive alerts via email, push notification, or SMS. The potential to monitor temperatures throughout facility can be a valuable asset to maintain a safe environment.

Monitor Auxiliary Spaces – Gain insight into intervening spaces or unmonitored auxiliary areas to proactively identify high traffic areas. Keeping a close eye on where employees gather is vital in determining the appropriate processes to encourage social distancing.

Protect Product Quality – Monitor critical production or storage areas to ensure that optimal and/or required environmental conditions are met and maintained, and product quality isn’t compromised. During these times promoting safety and quality is more important than ever, having sensor based controls can enhance current processes and help to determine necessary improvements.

Conclusion

COVID-19 is forcing a lot of people to think outside the box when it comes to preventing the spread of the virus. The best thing to do is to encourage social distancing with what you have on hand. Using your localized lighting management system can be a great way to accomplish this. If you need more information or need a light system that accomplishes this task, then check us out here to get the process started.

How Advanced Network Lighting Controls Can Benefit Your Facility

Are you an office manager, or do you manage a warehouse or factory? If you do, then you know how good lighting is critical for productivity and keeping people safe.  More and more office, warehouse and factory managers are discovering the benefits of using advanced network lighting controls for their facilities. Here’s what you need to know about advanced network lighting controls and how it can help your facility. 

What Are Network Lighting Controls? 

Maybe you’ve heard of the term “network lighting controls” but aren’t quite sure what it means. Simply put, network lighting controls (NLC), allows a cloud-based software to maximize energy savings, improve productivity,
and maintain safe, comfortable light levels.means the ability to set lighting schedules throughout a facility at each lighting fixture rather than for an entire lighting circuit.

Basic Benefits of NLC Over Basic Lighting Controls

This lighting system is advanced or better than basic lighting controls for several reasons. For example:

  • Fixture integrated sensors that permit lighting control at each individual fixture instead of using an entire light circuit allowing for a more granular control.
  • It uses networked systems, allowing the ability to be controlled from any device.
  • Wireless technology makes the lighting system easy to install as well as reconfigure.
  • Each of the fixtures can be set, independently, for dimming and illumination.
  • By dimming or even eliminating unused lighting, your facility uses less energy, so you save money.
  • Daylight harvesting allows the lighting to adjust automatically to stay at a target level as a response to natural light levels.
  • Ability to expand to sensors to monitor non-lighting items, such as humidity, temperature, space optimization, power metering and much more.
  • It provides lighting that’s more attuned to workers within a space. As a result, employees are more likely to do a better job and produce more.

The Bottom Line:

By using advanced Network Lighting Controls, you can save time, be more productive and efficient, and save money. If you’re thinking about a lighting upgrade, contact us for a no-cost lighting anaylsis.

Benefits of Manufacturing Facility Lighting Retrofits

Retrofitting Lighting Systems

Retrofitting a production facility’s lighting has many benefits. So many manufacturing facilities use metal halide high bay fixtures or other fluorescent lighting. While these have advantages over some other systems, LED lighting offers many benefits making a retrofit a sound business decision. Every business wants to lower its operating costs, maximize productivity, and increase employee morale. Installing the latest lighting systems can achieve all three.

Cost-Effective

Cost savings are the obvious benefit. Utility costs can be reduced by as much as 70%, but even a 30 – 50% saving can make a lot of sense when taken over three or four years. This sort of saving not only delivers a quick ROI, but in future years it continues to deliver lower costs. Motion sensors mean that local area lighting can be dimmed when that area is free of activity and instantly fully illuminated when the sensors detect activity.

In many states, there are rebates and incentives to companies which install new lighting and reduce energy use. We are experts in navigating how you can qualify for the rebates and incentives and will handle it on your behalf. Those incentives deliver even faster ROI.

Another potential saving from an LED lighting system is that the heat generated by older systems disappears. That can have a direct impact on cooling needs and A/C costs.

Higher Productivity, Safety, and Morale

Employees working in a well-lit area are less likely to make simple mistakes, for no other reason than they can see exactly what they are doing. Better lighting also improves safety levels. When employees see well, they automatically avoid potential mishaps and accidents. Nothing disrupts productivity and lowers morale like a serious accident.

On a minor note, LEDs do not buzz, so that little irritation disappears, which can also improve morale and productivity.

No Productivity Disruption

We will work around your systems and schedules to ensure your productivity is not disrupted. Many manufacturing facilities have regular preventive maintenance, repair, and new equipment installation events. We can work with your teams to do our work while projects like these are in hand.

The Takeaway

There are many benefits, both immediate and long-term, to retrofit your manufacturing plant’s lighting system. The decision is based on knowledge, so if you would like to learn more and arrange an initial consultation, please just click here to contact us.

Why LED is the Most Energy-Efficient Choice for Cold Storage Lighting

Are you in the grocery or warehouse business and need the right lighting for your cold storage? As a business owner or manager you realize the importance of being cost-effective, that’s why you need to choose the most energy-efficient option. The following are a few items for your consideration as to why LED is the most energy-efficient lighting for your cold storage.

LED lighting for cold storage

As you well know, finding lighting options that do well in cold environments has always been a challenge. Lighting options such as HID and fluorescent have not historically been known to be up to the job when it comes to cold environments. However, LED technology thrives in colder temperatures and do not face the same challenges as other technologies. As for energy efficiency, LED uses less energy than the it’s predecessors which can result immediate reductions in operating costs. The main reason that LED uses so much less electricity than other technologies is that they produce light differently.

How Older Technologies Waste Light

Other technologies produce light through various methods. While incandescent and HID pass electricity through a filament, fluorescent produces light by ionizing mercury vapor. Both methods require extreme heat for its atoms’ electrons to become excited enough to produce light, wasting nearly 90% of the electricity they consume, making them incredibly inefficient. They have a higher probability for failure, limited to a 360 degree beam spread resulting in wasted light, and lack of control capability.

How LED is more energy-efficient

On the other hand, LED produces light using electroluminescence. This process doesn’t use a filament and creates little heat, instead relying on a property of semiconductors to generate light. The methods used to generate light is not the only component of efficiency, equally as important is light distribution, LED has the ability to be directional to maximize the lighting while minimizing energy usage. Of course, the fact that LED doesn’t waste energy by creating or relying on excess heat is also part of what makes them so safe, as well as why they don’t need the large, fragile glass bulbs full of toxic gasses that make handling other lighting sources more difficult.

Here at Relumination, we want to help you find more energy-efficient ways to light your business. If you have any questions about cold storage lighting please contact us today!