Lighting
21/01/2014
Thos Storey operates a 'continual improvement' ethos and as such constantly strives to see where processes, practices or designs can be enhanced in terms of efficiency.
In mid 2013 a project was started to look at the way that the factory was lit to see if improvements could be made. At that time the whole factory was served by the traditional high-bay lights; a total of 120 lights costing approximately £30,000 per year in both electricity and maintenance. In addition to this the high-bay lights were increasingly unfit for purpose as they gave out an average of 150 lux which was simply not bright enough to comfortably work in.
Research showed that since the lighting was originally installed in 2006 there had been massive leaps in technology resulting in many new types of lights on the market with a huge variation in both capital cost and the amounts of both electricity required to power them and the quantity of light output.
A number of lights were brought in to allow for trials to be carried out. A balance had to be struck between trying to reduce as much as possible the amount of electricity required to power the lights against the light output - lumen- available. The current lights were 400w and there were some LED lights on the market that required only 100w to run however these were discounted relatively early into the project as the amount of lumen they gave out would give no lux improvement, and the aim of the project was to advance both the brightness of the factory as well as the carbon footprint reduction.
Eventually a source of LED lights was found locally to the factory - Taylor Electrical based in Cheadle Hulme. These lights required only 150w to run but gave the benefit of 270 lux of light. This meant that if each of the lights in the factory were replaced by this new type of light they would use approximately one-third of the amount of electricity currently required and they claim to be maintenance free for 5-years so removing maintenance spend.
In November 2013 the first 40 lights were replaced in the factory. The new LED lights are a whiter, daylight, colour, reducing/removing the yellowy hue of the old high-bay lights and improving the overall visibility within the factory. The plan is to replace the next 40 lights in the first quarter of 2014 and the last 40 by mid 2014.