It’s easy to cut your energy bills and improve the performance of your CCTV, says David Lambert of Raytec.
If your energy supplier presented you with an annual ‘surplus energy fee’ for your lighting, and if that fee totalled hundreds or even thousands of pounds – would you be happy? You’d probably be outraged, switch suppliers and take prompt action to avoid getting the same bill the following year. But in effect, that’s exactly what many organisations are paying right now – they are allowing themselves to be hit by an unnecessary charge, year after year, simply because they are still using inefficient and power-hungry lighting.
Look around your site tonight. Everywhere you see a light, there is potentially an opportunity for you to save money and to reduce energy waste by upgrading to efficient LED technology. The problem of bad lighting is all too easy too ignore. Upgrading to modern lighting technology is simple, but it still requires some action and some capital outlay. But, as with any money-drain, the longer you leave it, the more money you waste – and of course energy prices are only heading in one direction, and they will rise at an increasing rate as time goes on. So right now is the best time to take a clear-headed look at the lighting you are using, to find out if you have a problem. It’s actually very easy to do this.
It’s worth remembering that inefficient lighting burns up a lot more energy than most people realise. First, unless you stand close to them it’s not very obvious that your lights are giving off heat, but all lights do; to an extent. Heat from a light is energy wastage, electricity that has been converted to heat rather than light and the worst offenders are the old-style halogen lamps which can actually be hot enough to fry an egg on. Secondly, if your lights are operating all night while nobody is around to see them, it’s easy to forget how many hours of wasted energy usage that equates too. While you are at home, asleep, your organisation’s energy consumption is steadily ticking up, hour by hour.
For Raytec the focus of effort over the last five years has been to push forward energy-efficient LED technology in the fields of CCTV lighting and security lighting, both with infra-red and visible White-Light products. Most recently we’ve also moved into developing solutions for general lighting applications with our Urban multi-purpose White-Light range. All of this means we can supply exactly the right product to deliver optimum energy/cost savings in a growing number of applications. Raytec hasn’t just been pushing the technology forward, but also the ‘thinking’ of the industry – working with installers, consultants and manufacturers (such as leading CCTV brands) to stage test nights to demonstrate the efficiency of LED technology and encourage smarter and more economical lighting deployment. We also provide a full lighting design service to help our customers deliver the most efficient and economical lighting installation. Our LED units are not just more energy-efficient – they have a longer lifespan and they require zero-maintenance. Crucially, they can also be very accurately targeted on the scene thus reducing unnecessary light spill thanks to our Adaptive Illumination innovation and the wide choice of lighting patterns now available. But, perhaps most importantly, with their ‘quick start’ characteristic (no slow warm-up period) they pave the way for smarter lighting solutions to be developed: Illumination which is only triggered when it is needed. These developments offer security benefits as well as delivering an energy-saving bonus.
So how do you take the first step to saving that ‘energy wastage fee’ attributable to old and inefficient lighting? Spend a few minutes using our cost saving calculator on our website www.rayteccctv.com. It will quickly tell you how much energy, CO2 and money you can save over one, five and ten years. If you are interested, it will also take you to the Carbon Trust website and show you very simply, whether you can obtain a zero per cent loan on your new energy efficient equipment to help you finance an immediate lighting upgrade.
Armed with these illuminating figures, you may find yourself much more keen to take the next step and upgrade those old, wasteful lights. The only person who won’t thank you is your power supplier.
