Night light project saves money and the planet

Gloucestershire County Council is on target to save more than £200,000 and cut carbon by almost 1,400 tonnes in the first year of its night lighting project.

In February 2009, the council launched a scheme to turn off some street lights in rural areas and market towns between midnight and 5.30am. This was followed in April 2009 by a street light dimming scheme where high wattage bulbs were dimmed by 35% between 10:00pm and 5:30am.

Both schemes have been extremely successful with £202,760 savings and a carbon reduction of 1,392 tonnes – enough to boil 90 million kettles. In total 59 parish and town councils have already taken part in the night lighting project with 32 more signed up to start the scheme.

So far 4,556 lights have been adapted for part night lighting with another 2,440 awaiting conversion. In addition 9,540 high wattage lamps have been converted to dim after peak traffic periods have ended.

Southern Electric Contracting completed the work and local company Micatron UK Ltd, based in Upper Rissington, provide the equipment for both schemes. Both companies have worked well with the council and their continued cooperation has helped the projects progress so well.

Cllr Stan Waddington, cabinet member for environment, said: “As a council we’ve committed to reducing our carbon footprint and our energy usage and these projects have done just that. “This is an excellent result which has only been made possible with the support of our contractor and equipment supplier, but more importantly with the cooperation of parish and town councils across the county.

“Looking for new and innovative ways of saving money and cutting carbon is something we will be focussing on from now on and this is a great start.

“I look forward to seeing the projects progress in future.”

Each local council has a bespoke scheme tailored to the needs of their area so the volume and locations of part night lighting is decided in consultation with them. Gloucestershire’s scheme has being hailed as best practise by other councils across the UK with 24 local authorities asking for information on our projects. The scheme has also been praised by the County Surveyors’ Society, which represents local authority chief officers and was shortlisted for a Guardian Public Sector Service awards.

Micatron Lighting Ltd is the latest entrant for the University of Gloucestershire sponsored Business Innovation of the Year category in the 2009 Citizen and Echo Business Awards. Here we profile the company

Micatron UK Ltd, based at the Cotswold Innovation Centre in Upper Rissington Business Park, was founded by Trevor Sellars in September 2006.
The company was initially established to import specialist energy-saving products for the exterior lighting and street lighting markets, including Photocell devices and electronic control gear.
However, the problems of dealing with manufacturers on the other side of the world led Trevor to think about switching production to the UK.
"I became frustrated with reliability issues and the soaring costs of producing and shipping products imported from Asia," said Trevor.
"So in 2007 I founded a second company, Micatron Lighting Ltd to design and manufacture new types of energy savings products for the street lighting market in the UK."
Subsequently, a range of specialist power-saving and dimming switches has been supplied to many local authorities and lantern manufacturers throughout the UK and Europe.
Trevor Sellars, who is a qualified lighting engineer; has been in the lighting industry for almost 30 years. He previously worked for Southern Electricity and Ringway Highway Services as a contracts manager' maintaining street lights and signs for the public roads and motorway networks.

Other projects in which he was involved include the Brockworth to Swindon bypass, the M6 Toll Road, Channel Tunnel rail link and many major traffic routes throughout the country. Micatron Lighting's uniquely designed products enable customers not only to specify them to be installed into a new products, but also to retrofit them to existing street lighting equipment.
"This retrofit capability reduces costs, saves the customers time and allows them to extend the working life of their existing lighting equipment," said Trevor.
"It also avoids sending old lighting units to the landfill."
Switches made by the company are designed to dim street lighting at off-peak times reducing energy costs and CO2 emissions by approximately 28 per cent, while maintaining a safe lighting environment.
With cost savings like this it's no surprise that Micatron Lighting's order books are impressively healthy. "Advance orders for in excess of 15,000 units have been placed since production started

in August 2008 and the product range has been extended to cater for most of the lamp types used by local authorities including Gloucestershire County Council," said Trevor.
New designs have recently been developed to allow both LED and fluorescent light fittings to be dimmed in the same manner with an optional presence detector fitted to override the dimming stage should pedestrians be detected.
This technology is ideally suited to areas where a minimum lighting level is required for CCTV purposes, or where an increased light level is required for pedestrian movement.
Many local businesses, universities and shoppin malls are installing this method of control to reduce their operating costs during off peak periods.

The 2009 Citizen and Gloucestershire Echo Business Awards are the chance for county businesses to shine. We will be profiling the entrants over the coming months, culminating in a glittering awards evening at The Centaur, Cheltenham Racecourse on October 8.