The Austin Community College District is working hard to conserve energy, use fewer resources and minimize its waste. The college’s sustainability initiatives are broad and include an effort to retrofit outdated, energy-wasting lighting with energy-efficient LED lighting.
 
The District recently completed an LED lighting retrofit on its Northridge Campus in Austin, where parking lot, courtyard and building perimeter lights were replaced with LED lights.
 
In addition to saving energy, a goal of the LED lighting retrofit project was to improve light quality in the dark parking lot, according to Andy Kim, director of Environmental Stewardships for Austin Community College.
 
“The parking lot was very poorly lit and inefficient,” Kim said. “After we identified the scope of work, we researched appropriate LED fixtures and found the ROI was less than 6 years, not to mention resolving safety and security concerns.”
 
The Northridge Campus reduced energy consumption by a total of 69 percent in two parking lots, a courtyard and around the perimeter of the building.

• Replaced 104, 1,000-watt high pressure sodium lights in one parking lot with 104, 265-watt LED lights. Also replaced 32, 400-watt metal halide lights with 32, 250-watt LED lights.
• Replaced 47, 175-watt metal halide lights in the courtyard with 47, 72-watt LED lights.
• Replaced 21, 174-watt metal halide lights around the building perimeter with 21 53-watt LED lights.

The school is also curbing additional energy consumption in the parking lots by using a ROAM system that allows the school to control parking lot lights individually, according to Kim. This will allow the school to save more energy by turning off or diming unnecessary lights while the parking lot is empty.