Steelscape, Kalama, Wash.
RETROFIT TEAM
LIGHTING INSTALLER: Steelscape maintenance and engineering staff, Kalama
MATERIALS
A total of 355 light fixtures, as well as wireless controls, were used to upgrade the lighting at this 553,000-square-foot steel coating facility. The following were installed:
- American Electric Lighting Autobahn outdoor LED area luminaire
- Holophane Phuzion and Petrolux LED high-bay luminaires
- XPoint Wireless control system
- nLight
- SensorView monitoring system and software package
In addition to a lumen-maintenance strategy (where lumen output is initially set to 80 percent to balance the common loss of output over an initial period), lighting is modified even further utilizing a task tuning strategy throughout the facility to meet workers’ needs while maximizing energy efficiency. For example, a scheduling strategy was implemented by dimming and/or raising light levels at different times of day and per work station according to specific needs. The storage area now runs at 50 percent of the power it used prior to the upgrade, and a new controls schedule means nighttime savings at the plant are about 80 percent.
LIGHTING MANUFACTURER: Acuity Brands
THE RETROFIT
Steelscape uses megawatts of energy on machinery operations. Consequently, the company’s leaders discovered the facility’s indoor and outdoor lighting were accounting for far too great a percentage of maintenance costs and creating a disproportionate amount of headaches, such as downtime and security risks, on the plant floor and elsewhere.
For example, outside the facility, the company’s maintenance crew would replace several burned-out fixtures at once because maintenance was time-consuming and replacing one at a time was simply too much trouble. The process of waiting for multiple burnouts, however, was less than ideal for safety and security. Inside the plant, a burned-out bulb or failed ballast usually meant taping off the darkened area and then working around active machinery and other plant operations to change out the bad part of the luminaire. To avoid such situations, the company often spent one or two 12-hour days just checking lights, which amounted to more than $10,000 annually on maintenance.
Managed internally, the lighting upgrade was completed in a year’s time and was followed by two full days of software training for key members of the Steelscape electrical engineering team at the Acuity Brands facility in Chatsworth, Calif.
Critically important, lighting-maintenance calls were reduced to virtually zero, but Robert Torres, an automation engineer with Steelscape who served as the project champion, is especially pleased that the completed system performs how he anticipated. “As an electrical engineer, my vision is to have control of machinery,” he says. “Why not be able to control the lights? It’s among the most visual equipment out there on the floor.”
PHOTOS: Acuity Brands