Urbis LED Luminaire the perfect choice for Westminster City Council
Article Date: 19th October 2009
The Paddington Branch of the historic Grand Union Canal is currently being given a new lease of life. This new scheme will turn the area into a picturesque destination linking it into the capital's expanding cycle network. We were asked to supply a new lighting solution for the Westbourne Green area by Westminster City Council.
The original lighting throughout the open spaces of Westbourne Green was considered to be poor, particularly for an area with a perceived ‘fear of crime’. The installations also suffered from maintenance issues and cable network faults. The Westminster City Council Parks & Gardens team received funding to improve the infrastructure of the area and they asked the City Council’s lighting service to help address the problems.
Dave Franks, Public Lighting Manager for the Council, explained to us, “the brief was to achieve energy savings and reduce the carbon footprint of the existing scheme, while improving the illumination levels. The Parks & Gardens team had previously chosen Urbis’ Haydon lantern in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, which came fitted with the Harvard LeafNut monitoring system and 60W Cosmo lamps.
“This set-up proved successful, so the team wanted to use the same lighting unit for this scheme. We approached Urbis to see if they were able to offer an LED solution, fitted into their decorative Haydon lantern, which would meet the design standards required for this location. This proved to be no problem for their design team. ”
In total, we supplied 63 of our Haydon luminaires, which are mainly mounted on the original 4.5m Columns. Thirty of the Haydons are each fitted with 12 white LEDs, which provide a warm white light for the main pedestrian routes across the park. The use of LED technology means that the direction of the light can be tightly controlled, so that the majority falls only on the paths where it is needed.
We also supplied a further 33 Haydons fitted with the 60W Cosmo lamps and the Harvard monitoring system. These illuminate the path alongside the canal and around the park’s edges in a warm white light.
Dave commented, “the original lighting system used 125W MBFU lamps which had a total energy requirement of 8.8kW. With the new lighting we calculated that the total scheme wattage is just 2.8kW, which is a saving of 6kW. At current energy rates this equates to reducing our energy bill by approximately £1,500 per year on just this one scheme.”
The Council will also have the ability to make further energy savings by making use of the Harvard remote monitoring system. The system allows the CosmoPolis lamps to be programmed to Switch On later and switch off earlier. It also provides the Council with the option of altering the power consumption of each lamp. For example, when a new lamp is fitted its power consumption can be reduced so that the scheme is running at the designed lighting levels.
The use of new technology will also benefit them in other ways. For example, the lamp change interval on the Cosmo is four years as opposed to two years for the MBFU. The LED units should last for more than 50,000 hours (13 years) before they need to be assessed.
Dave stated, “the scheme appears to be a success and provides improved levels of quality illumination with good uniformity. The white light gives clear fields of vision for pedestrians crossing Westbourne Green, which will help to reduce the perceived fear of crime.
“This scheme is a small step towards achieving the City Council’s carbon reduction targets as well as delivering a compliant lighting solution and operational improvements.”
Martin Low, Director of Transportation at Westminster City Council, added, "this has been an incredibly exciting project. It has helped transform an unloved and unused part of the city into a valuable space for everyone to enjoy. We are keen to bring open spaces into public use whenever possible and assist in working with the local community to improve the environment. This helps improve the quality of life for both residents and visitors alike."
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