Emergency LED Lighting Sydney from Enlighten Australia

Hyde Park Towers fire stair retrofit

Project Scope

Hyde Park Towers is a 32 story residential tower (with some commercial space) located on Elizabeth Street Sydney, between Liverpool and Goulburn Streets. Completed in 1995, the tower has 174 apartments, full gym and swimming pool facilities and approximately 600 residents.

The building's Executive Committee is actively involved in innovation in water and energy saving as well as waste collection and recycling. The tower has been used as a reference site for Sydney Water and is one of five pilot sites for selected for the City of Sydney's Smart Green Apartment program.

In addition to the 2011 fire stair lighting upgrade, the building owners also conducted common area lighting upgrades involving replacement of halogen down lights with compact fluorescent lights, removal of excess car park lighting and installation of timers resulting in a $4,500 annual saving.

Following an introduction by Green Strata, enLighten Australia was awarded the contract to retrofit LED lighting in stairwells of the 23 residential apartment floors, 6 car park and 1 plant room levels.

The existing lighting in these areas was a mixture of 18W and 36W single and double T8 fluorescent fixtures driven by electronic and magnetic ballasts. The original lighting installation was an emergency fluorescent fixture and a standard fluorescent fixture, providing two maintained lights at each location. The lights operated 24/7 and had no energy saving controls.

Products used

The fire stairs were alarmed and were extremely low use areas that accessed each floor and the car park, thereby ideally suited to the Chamaeleon light that operated on a standby level of light during unoccupied periods.

Chamaeleon emergency lights were installed in the fire stair areas which required 24 hour lighting. The microwave motion sensors of the Chamaeleon light, which operate on a reduced lighting output in standby mode and full light in occupancy mode, enabled the impressive electricity savings.

Electricity Savings Results

156 fluorescent fixtures were replaced with 82 Chamaeleon lights, generating lighting levels above Australian standard AS2293.3:2005 requirements of 80 lux. Electricity consumption data logged by enLighten Australia indicated a 93.55% reduction in electricity usage across the fire stairs.

The Chamaeleon installation also resulted in an average 15% increase in power factor. Power factor improvements indicate an increase in the efficiency of the lighting circuit, which translates into substantial future reductions in Ausgrid's kVA energy demand charge.

Maintenance savings contribute to the project ROI and are calculated by costing maintenance access, number of lamps replaced, number of control components replaced (ballasts, starters, transformers), lamp and control component replacement costs, disposal costs and emergency battery costs.

The building owners will be applying for Energy Savings Certificates from the project under the NSW Energy Savings Scheme.