Minify Energy is proud of a recent LED lighting upgrade completed for a large-scale commercial laundry facility in St. Paul. This facility, now benefitting from increased brightness, light quality, and a greatly improved working environment, works around the clock cleaning medical garments for many of the Twin Cities’ largest and busiest hospitals and clinics.
Upon initial assessment, Minify Energy conducted light meter readings that ranged from 7 to 20-footcandles with a great degree of variance across the 85,000 SF facility. While originally designed to produce higher footcandles in working areas, over time fluorescent light levels degrade, leaving less than desirable lumen output and harder-to-distinguish colors.
Armed with the latest advances in LED technology, Minify Energy was able to offer a solution that more than doubled the brightness throughout the work areas from an average of 20 to over 40 footcandles, while also increasing the Color Rendering Index (CRI) from 65 to 85 CRI, greatly improving colors to more true hues and tones, important for workers whose job it is to ensure the highest quality of their final product. The combination of these lighting qualities helps to improve quality assurance, safety, productivity, and employee morale.
From the project leads to the floor workers, employees are pleased with the results. Workspaces are more inviting, improving operations from equipment to inspecting materials.
Original Fluorescent Tubes New LED Fixtures w/Controls
These production and work-related outcomes truly seem to outshine the value of the energy conservation and utility savings that originally drove the project. That said, those operational savings are still worthy of some time in the spotlight. Lighting consumption and utility costs were reduced by 54%, with a simple payback of just 2.2 years, saving the client over $21,000 per year and reducing operations and maintenance (O&M) costs associated with the bulb and ballast replacements.
On top of being both lumen and color “selectable” via a switch on the lights, we added Luminaire Level Lighting Controls (LLLC’s) into the mix in a production area that allowed for a much higher degree of light tunability and flexibility. These controls include motion sensors and daylight controls set to maximize energy savings. Each light is equipped with individual sensors and are quickly and easily adjusted with a remote control that is simply pointed at each light to deliver the desired settings for areas and tasks.
We want to thank our clients and their employees for taking steps in reducing energy usage and improving their work environments all while performing an important and continued service for our community. Thank you from Minify Energy!