We were dealing with several factors in our decision to upgrade the High School’s lighting. With rising electricity costs, we knew that our energy bills would increase when our fixed energy deal came to an end in late 2023.
We’ve also always been mindful of environmental issues. The High School of Dundee started its journey to net zero in 2022 and is working to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030.
Because our old lighting had no sensors or controls, we would switch it on in the morning, particularly in circulation areas, and it would stay on all day until we closed the school between 7pm and 9pm.
Switching to more energy efficient lighting was an obvious step on the journey to reducing our energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
On top of these issues, we were facing the obsolescence of our existing lighting. Fluorescent lighting, which includes most of the lighting within The High School, will be phased out by 2024. We knew our lighting would become obsolete and we wouldn’t be able to replace parts when they expired.
We realised that making changes to the lighting would be a challenge thanks to the age of the school, as several buildings at our main campus date to 1834 and have intricate historical features such as ornate plasterwork, stained-glass windows, and high ceilings.
This depth of history makes our infrastructure very challenging to work with.
We also needed to make our lighting adaptable to the needs of different departments. Each teaching area requires different levels of lighting, and even then, most departments need to change their lighting levels throughout the day.
For instance, when someone is teaching from the whiteboard, they need specific lights off, but when they’re teaching from other materials, they want to put all the lights on. If
students need to watch a video on the main screen, the teacher will need to switch all the lights out.
Energy reduction and lighting controls.
When we put the contract out to tender, Whitecroft was able to clearly justify its system and fittings and demonstrate how these would reduce costs.
Whiteroft’s proposed installation of 1700 low energy LEDs together with its Organic Response control system included forecasted energy savings of 76 percent and a return on our investment in just 3.7 years.
Our electrical contractors, EW Edwardson, had fitted emergency lighting at the school a year earlier, so they understood the complexities of working in and around the features of each building. They were able to replace just the existing fluorescent fittings, without disturbing the old plasterwork, and set up full controls based on the existing wiring.
The installation of Organic Response system has been transformational. This senses natural daylight levels in any area and reduces or increases the amount of light to work with those levels, and when the sensors cannot detect people in a room, they turn the lights off.
Teaching staff have been given their own wireless switches, which they use to switch individual lights on and off, and for modifying lighting levels to suit the teaching environment they need.
I think these new controls are phenomenal. We’re not only benefiting from more energy efficient technology, but also from increased periods when lights are switched off.
The modular nature of the Whitecroft fittings, which means we only have to replace individual parts when they expire, rather than the whole fitting, is good for waste reduction. This was a big consideration for us, and something we saw as very good for the school. It helps with our net zero journey.
We’re not using the full capacity of the fittings. We have them dimmed down to the levels we require in each area, so some are 60/70/80% capacity, but none are on at 100% capacity. We hope this will extend their life expectancy and help with our energy bills.
Aesthetic benefits.
The new fittings have also brought certain aspects of our historic estate to life. We have these phenomenal ceiling roses and with the up lights shining on them, they are much more visible. We are seeing these even more as the nights become darker earlier in the autumn and the new lights highlight them beautifully.
I’ve had feedback from various building users about the benefits of the new lighting, including how much nicer they think the teaching environment is. Office staff have told me that they no longer have headaches, and several colleagues have commented on how well lit our spaces are.
Gregor Bankowski is the Estates and Operations Manager at The High School of Dundee
Find out more about Organic Response at: https://www.whitecroftlighting.com/products/organic-response/ Discover
Whitecroft’s Education solutions at: https://www.whitecroftlighting.com/solutions/sector-solutions/education/
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