Category Archives: Parking and Roadways

University of Minnesota Exceeds Expectations, Achieves 90% Energy Savings with LED Parking Garage Lighting Conversion

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One of the nation’s largest schools serving over 60,000 students, the University of Minnesota (U of M) is upgrading the lighting at all 18 parking ramps and garages on its Minneapolis campus. In the Northrop Auditorium Garage, a small 24,000 square foot facility with 75 parking spots, U of M replaced low-wattage high-pressure sodium fixtures with high efficiency, lower wattage LED fixtures with lighting controls. This Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking (LEEP) Campaign Award winning project achieved 90% energy savings by upgrading to LEDs with lighting controls.

Read the full report here.

Howard Hughes Corporation Saves 75% (500,000 kWh) With LED Lighting Upgrade

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The Howard Hughes Corporation upgraded the lighting for the parking structure at the Ward Centers in Honolulu, Hawaii. Currently, the Ward Centers is occupied by 130 national retailers, local shops and restaurants in five shopping districts. The Ward Centers parking structure is seven stories high, and encompasses nearly 300,000 square feet and houses over 800 parking spaces. The parking structure is a 2014 Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking (LEEP) Campaign Award winner for Best Use of Lighting Controls in a Single Facility as the new lighting system uses both LED and fluorescent fixtures along with various lighting controls. The Ward Centers was able to achieve 75% in energy savings.

Read the full report here.

Restoring Detroit’s Street Lighting System

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The City of Detroit is undertaking a comprehensive restoration of its street lighting system that includes transitioning the existing high-pressure sodium (HPS) sources to light-emitting diode (LED). Detroit’s well-publicized financial difficulties over the last several years have added many hurdles and constraints to this process. Strategies to overcome these issues have largely been successful, but have also brought a few mixed results. This document provides an objective review of the circumstances surrounding the system restoration, the processes undertaken and decisions made, and the results so far.

While the lighting transition in Detroit is still ongoing, the new system has already vastly improved on the failed system that preceded it. According to publicized estimates at the time, only about half of the roughly 88,000 total installed units in the old system were in reliable operating condition. Such conditions make it difficult to establish a baseline for comparisons; for example, an overall (but factually inaccurate) assumption that all 88,000 lights were in operating order was necessary to produce postrestoration energy and cost savings estimates in this analysis. Allowing for this and other simplifying assumptions, Table ES.1 summarizes a few of the estimated benefits that can be expected from the street lighting transition once completed in 2016.

Read the full study here:   http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/09/f27/2015_restoring-detroit.pdf

The Benefits of Quality Lighting in Parking Garages Are Too Obvious to Ignore

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They’re not the most glamorous piece of infrastructure, unlike the bridges, airports and schools that get most of the public and political attention. But their 24/7 operation and sheer volume make parking garages low hanging fruit for huge energy savings. While there is no official number of parking garages in the U.S., the International Parking Institute pegs the number of parking spaces at anywhere from 100 million to 750 million. That’s a lot of parking housed in a lot of garages with a lot of lighting— much of which is inefficient or poorly controlled. As a result, there’s plenty of opportunity for technology upgrades, and sweetening the pot for owners are government grants or utility rebates that can accelerate the ROI on these projects.

Read the full article:   http://www.leepcampaign.org/uploads/7/4/8/7/7487823/out_of_the_shadows_june_2012_lda.pdf

LED Replacement Fixtures Yield $135K Annual Savings and 1.3M Kilowatt Hours

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One and Two Potomac Yard, both LEED Platinum certified for Existing Buildings, are well known in the Washington Metropolitan area for their sustainability and green building practices.  Property management and ownership, Cassidy Turley and USAA Real Estate respectively, continue to push for sustainability and energy reduction to reduce operating expenses and add value to the assets.

Located on a formerly abandoned railroad yard in Arlington, Virginia, the two 12-story buildings are comprised of approximately 620,000 sq. ft. of office and retail, conference center space, and a fitness center facility; and two five-level, above/below grade parking decks totaling 300,000 sq. ft.

Read the full report:   http://www.leepcampaign.org/uploads/7/4/8/7/7487823/potomac_yard_garage_lighting_retrofit_case_study_final.pdf

Investing in Their Future: Portland’s Purchase and Conversion of an LED Street Lighting System

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The City of Portland, Oregon is midway through the process of converting its street lighting system from the previous generation high-pressure sodium (HPS) to modern light-emitting diode (LED) technology. In getting to this point, the City purchased a large portion of its street lighting system and encountered a range of issues among the stakeholders, some of which were expected and some not. As these issues may be more or less common to other municipalities pursuing street lighting purchases and conversions, this paper identifies some of the challenges encountered and details of how they were addressed to help inform and facilitate future lighting transitions elsewhere. Preliminary discussion of the results and lessons learned are also included.

Read the full report here.

Reconstructed Bridge in Minneapolis Shines Bright with LED Lighting

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This report describes the process and results of a demonstration of solid-state lighting (SSL) technology conducted in 2009 at the recently reconstructed I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, MN. The project was supported under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solid-State Lighting GATEWAY Technology Demonstration Program. Other participants in the demonstration project included the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT), Federal Highways Administration (FHWA), and BetaLED™ (a division of Ruud Lighting). Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) conducted the measurements and analysis of the results.

Read the full report:   http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/gateway_i-35w-bridge.pdf

LED Provides Effective and Efficient Parking Area Lighting at the NAVFAC Engineering Service Center

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Investigating ways to reduce energy consumption and costs, the Navy’s Technology Validation (Techval) Program with support from the Department of Energy, Federal Energy Management Program, sought to demonstrate the new LED technology for parking areas. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command Engineering Service Center (NAVFAC ESC) Headquarters was selected as their first LED demonstration.

Read the full report:   http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/01/f7/led_parking_lights_navfac.pdf

KCMO Demonstration Project Measures Results of Upgrading HID Lights to LED

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This report documents a study of nine different light-emitting diode (LED) street lighting products installed in February 2011 as replacements for incumbent high-pressure sodium (HPS) luminaires in the city of Kansas City, Missouri (KCMO). The subject lighting investigation was undertaken by the city as part of a continued focus on improving street safety that had begun with an earlier extensive upgrade to the streetlighting system in the late 1990s, which substantially improved both the quantity and uniformity of its lighting. The current study was conducted in support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Municipal Solid-State Street Lighting Consortium, via support of the GATEWAY Solid-State Lighting Technology Demonstration Program, and involved multiple staff from different organizations employing a variety of meters and procedures

Read the full report:   http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/2013_gateway-msslc_kc.pdf

Study Shows the Viability of LED to Replace Low-Bay Metal Halide Lighting

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The LED Low-Bay Garage Lighting Demonstration project studied the applicability of low-bay LED fixtures in a parking-garage installation. Low-bay metal halide (MH) fixtures were replaced with new low-bay LED fixtures in a parking garage located in South San Francisco. Light quality and intensity, and electrical power measurements were taken. Economic costs were then estimated, and qualitative satisfaction was determined from interviews with the property managers. The average illuminance level was slightly increased after the installation of the LED fixtures. The maximum uniformity ratio (a ratio of the brightest spot to the dimmest) decreased, suggesting a more uniform light spread. However, the average illuminance near the darkest wall decreased which the property managers identified as a potential concern.

Read the full report:   http://www.etcc-ca.com/sites/default/files/OLD/images/stories/pdf/ETCC_Report_435.pdf