Significant savings in costs and use of electricity and noticeable improvements in quality are now found at Saltley Community Leisure Centre at Bordesley Green, Birmingham. This follows the leisure centre lighting upgrade at the sports hall by Chalmor Limited, energy saving lighting and heating control specialists. Projected savings in annual running costs are startling – £727.00 compared to the former cost of £3,348.00. The new system is projected to pay for itself in 3.9 years.
A challenge for Chalmor’s specialist team was to provide lighting sufficiently versatile to illuminate a range of activities from indoor cricket and football to badminton, whilst offering maximum savings in energy.
The new lighting features Brilliance light fittings using T5 lamps with a life of 24,000 hours compared with a typical 12,000 hours for standard SON lamps. The new lighting strikes and re-strikes instantly and operates flexibly according to how the sports hall is being used. For example, for badminton and general use two of the six lamps are used with a load of just 108W. Ball games are illuminated by four of the lights using 216W. Indoor cricket uses all six lamps. Even then the load is only 324W – still lower than the former power consumption.
Chalmor’s Autolux Universal Lighting Controller with passive infra red sensors controls the lighting. It is commissioned to work according to the specific activities in the sports hall to achieve significant reductions in energy use. Importantly, Autolux responds to natural daylight levels and provides consistent switching and lighting when needed.
Maintenance in this busy leisure facility is another issue that has been tackled. The need for maintenance is now reduced from 1.6 years to 13.8 years with a maintenance cost per year of £56 compared to the former sum of £269.00. Robert Clubbe, Chalmor’s Marketing Manager, commented, “This project demonstrates our expertise in the sports hall lighting arena. For the past two years we have won the EMILAS (Energy Management and Innovation in Lighting Award Scheme) for Sports Lighting.”
John Carrigan, the Centre Manager, comments, “We are extremely happy with the new lighting scheme installed by Chalmor. We now have total control and flexibility of our lighting levels for different sports and we can also now turn the lights off and on as often as we require. This is also a win win situation with the projected savings on running costs and maintenance.”
