Few buildings rely on light like garden centres, but what does that mean for energy consumption?
With an estimated 2000 garden centres in the UK, the consumption level – and costs – might be dramatic.
Garden centres rely on vast amounts of lighting, and as the cost of electricity continues to soar, they may be paying the price on their energy bills.
What’s more, one thing is becoming clearer each year: that energy itself doesn’t just have a financial cost, but an environmental one.
What’s the problem with conventional lighting?
The first issue is simple – conventional bulbs don’t use energy efficiently.
You see, a conventional incandescent light bulb converts up to 95% of the energy it uses into heat, not light. Half of what you are spending on lighting is actually going towards heat.
Consider the ripple effect of that in a garden centre, where specific temperatures are required to protect products. What you’re spending on heat instead of light is wasting you even more money (and energy) via increased need for air conditioning and cooling.
The second problem is human error. Conventional lighting doesn’t detect occupancy, or adjust according to natural light. Every time a light is left on unnecessarily, or runs at full blast despite plenty of bright, natural daylight, even more energy is wasted.
Meet Eluma: a cool solution to inefficient lighting
Eluma is our innovative answer to outdated technology – and it could cut your lighting costs by up to 95%.
Just installing Eluma and replacing old bulbs with modern LEDs has been known to chop the utility bills of our customers in half.
LEDs have an operating life of over 50,000 hours (compared to 20,000 in incandescent bulbs) which reduces the need to spend on maintenance or replacements.
Remember the air conditioning conundrum we mentioned? Eluma is the solution for this too, taking the strain off of this system and allowing a saving of more than 5% just in cooling costs.
Finally, with human error a thing of the past, day-to-day savings are achieved with ease. Sensors automatically switch off applicable lights when no occupants are detected, and Daylight Harvesting tools automatically adjust brightness according to the level of natural daylight detected.
Case Studies
See how Eluma generated savings of 85% for Van Hage Garden Centres.