Lighting the LED Revolution

"With LED lighting, we are improving visibility and enhancing the safety of our parking structure while reducing energy consumption," said Chris Cioni, associate director of UC Davis facilities management, utilities division. "We are also significantly reducing both maintenance costs and light trespass compared to the incumbent metal-halide technology. Deploying LED lighting in our parking facilities yields benefits in many areas, and we plan to evaluate LED lighting in other applications."

"Our initial LED lighting installation is part of California Lighting Technology Center's Smart Lighting Initiative, an effort we have pursued over the past two years to utilize high-efficiency lighting sources with bi-level activity sensors to reduce lighting levels when no one is using the parking facility," said Michael Siminovitch, CLTC director. "Even at half-power, the LED fixtures are delivering plenty of light to the space. We may be able to cut levels further, saving even more electricity and lengthening fixture lifetimes."

Project Highlights

• New bi-level LED lighting at UC Davis' South Entry Parking Structure near the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.
• The LED light fixtures, featuring activity-sensing technology adapted and developed at California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) at UC Davis, provide enhanced nighttime visibility while reducing energy consumption by up to 80 percent compared with the metal-halide fixtures that were replaced.
• Switching to LED lights and adding bi-level activity-sensing technology yields energy savings for the project averaging 50 percent. In low mode, energy savings are up to 80 percent.
• The university installed 50 BetaLED™ fixtures in this project and according to the university, based on nighttime, bi-level operation with an average ambient temperature near 15°C, the luminaires should require no relamping and be virtually maintenance free for 20 to 25 years.
• UC Davis projects that the maintenance savings will be 42 percent compared with the fixtures that were replaced.