Replacing thousands of older florescent lights at Mohawk College’s Fennell Street Campus with high-performance fluorescent lights and electronic ballasts provide a brighter lighting environment and reduce electricity costs.
It represents the first phase and most visible upgrade to Hamilton College of a $10 million energy-efficient replacement program planned for the next three to five years. The entire energy conservation program will involve replacing the school’s boilers, ventilation and air conditioning units as well as other components of the electrical system.
Mohawk College serves 10,000 full-time and about 50,000 part-time and continuing education students at its facilities in Hamilton, Burlington and Brantford.
Horizon Utilities Corporation, the third-largest municipally owned electricity distribution company in Ontario, serves over 230,000 residential and commercial customers in Hamilton and St. Catharines.
In June 2007, the college began replacing 8,600 T12 older fluorescent lights at its Fennell Street campus with new high-performance T8 and T5 fluorescent lights and electronic ballasts. The new fixtures provide a brighter environment and are 30 per cent more energy efficient.
For Tony Scime, Mohawk’s Manager of Facility Management Division, Mechanical and Electrical, the changeover involved nearly two years of preparatory work.
T8 and T5 lamps provide better color quality (color rendering) and highest light output (efficacy) by using rare-earth phosphors. T8 lamps used with electronic ballasts will use about 32 percent less electricity than T12 lamps with magnetic ballasts. T5 lamps and electronic ballasts will use about 45 percent less energy than T12s.
In addition to reduced electricity demand and significant cost savings, the other reasons for replacing the old lighting was the higher quality of light provided by the T5s and T8s and reduced maintenance.
The T8 and T5 lamps do not have to be replaced as often as the T12s, so college maintenance personnel can be devote more time to other tasks, Scime explains.
Brian Smith, Manager of Conservation and Demand Management for Horizon Utilities, explains that lighting retrofits are one of the most effective energy conservation measures available. Replacing T12 florescent lights and magnetic ballasts with more energy-efficient T8 lights and electronic ballasts saves significant amount of electricity. “They not only provide a better quality of light, they are quieter, last longer and require far less maintenance," he says. "This can mean a 40 to 60 percent reduction of energy consumption.“
The savings comes from replacing the primary working components within the light fixtures with newer energy-efficient lamps and ballasts and redesigning or replacing existing fixtures with new, more efficient ones. Additional savings may come with the installation of occupancy sensors that automatically turn off the lights when the area is unoccupied, he explains.
In the first 90 days after the conversion project was completed, Mohawk College cut its electricity usage by nearly 100,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) –- a $12,000 savings.
The conversion to the more energy-efficient lamps will reduce the college’s annual electricity demand by more than 645,000 kWh, representing an annual savings of $82,000 according to Horizon Utilities.
Under Horizon’s powerWISE™ Business Incentive Program, Mohawk College received a $50,000 financial incentive for making retrofits to conserve electricity.
ERIP is designed to encourage commercial, industrial, institutional and agricultural customers in all parts of Ontario to conserve electricity by replacing old lighting, ventilation, heating and cooling systems with new energy-efficient ones, explains Constantine (Taki) Eliadas, OPA’s Director of Commercial and Institutional Conservation Programs.
“Under the Ontario Power Authority’s ERIP, financial incentives for electricity efficiency upgrades will now be available through local electricity distribution companies across the province,” he says.
Electricity efficiency in lighting is the most obvious improvement at the college. ‘Lighting gives the biggest bang for the buck, that’s why we did it first. Everyone’s eyes are opened. It is the Wow factor. No one is going to see the chillers (air conditioner system). No one is going to see the boilers. They’re concerned about whether their office is hot or cold,” says Tony.
When students and visitors enter college, they immediately notice the older conventional style exit signs have been replaced with the Light Emitting Diode (LED) exit signs, which use 90 percent less energy.
The college’s gymnasium is one of the areas where the lighting replacement program has the most impact.
Before replacing the gym’s high bay metal halide light fixtures with six T5 high output lamps, basketball games had often to be cancelled because the burnt-out lamps make the playing surface unsafe. “Referees would not allow the game to start because of the unlit areas on the court,” explains Tony.
With the high bay metal halide light fixtures, there were usually four lamps not functioning although only one lamp was burnt out. With the T5 lamps the fixture is still illuminated. Because the ballast was located outside the building, it became a time-consuming and costly effort to replace only a few lamps. The T5 high output lamps can be turned off during off peak time – an electricity-saving feature not available with the previous lamps.
To avoid this, the staff began replacing all the lamps once a year. It costs $25-$30 to replace one lamp, representing hundreds of dollars in replacement costs every year.
With the new six lamp T5 high output fixtures, one or two lamps can burn out without causing major disruption since the fixture can still illuminate the space.
Before the retrofit, the high bay metal halide lamps were left on all day long due to their long restart time. Now, with the “instant on” T5 lamps, lights can be turned off during the day when the gym is not in use.
“We’re one of the first colleges to replace its high bay metal halide lamps with T5 high output lamps and create a better lit playing surface requiring less maintenance“, says Tony.
“Did someone turn on the lights”? When Hamilton’s Mohawk College President MaryLynn West-Moynes overheard this comment from a student, she knew the replacement of thousands of lights at the college had significantly improved the college’s physical environment for thousands of students.
“The lighting replacement program gives Mohawk College a significantly improved environment that surpasses similar institutions and provides our students with increased value for their money. It also emphasizes the message that the students are our clients,” Tony says.
“There are now fewer hours used in maintenance, fewer delays, less downtime and the frustration by users is gone.”
When the replacement program is completed, maintenance personnel who previously would be replacing and maintaining the lights will move to other functions such as working with computer controls, automation and monitoring “There will be more value in what we do,” says Tony.
The conversion to the new lighting environment progressed rapidly because of the flexibility and adaptability of the college’s external engineering management firm, MCW Custom Electricity Solutions Ltd. “Their engineers accommodated changes as the circumstances required,” he explained.
“Every dollar we save in electricity costs is a dollar we can invest in serving our students,” President West-Moynes says.
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