Article From: Energy in Buildings & Industry Magazine – July/August 2012
Sheffield’s Meadowhall Shopping Centre Retail is slicing 25 per cent off its energy consumption as it makes the transition from RGB cold cathode lighting to LEDs.
Meadowhall was one of Oldham Lighting’s original cold cathode installations and typical of a large retail area where design is sometimes constrained by the technical specifications. Managing Director, Chris Richardson, believes the change to LED has added more than just technical freedom to retail lighting projects. “This was one of our original RGB cold cathode installations where we fitted bespoke fixtures we manufactured in our own factory. With the clamour for LED from clients we have been revisiting our larger retail clients to advise and fit LED often in conjunction with young lighting designers. The technology might not be brand new but the ideas many young lighting designers have are being exploited by the technical superiority of LED fixtures. The original RGB cold cathode lights were low voltage with a remote magnetic control gear operating at 60 watts per metre. Now with LED we can not only improve on the original RGB design intent but also reduce the energy consumption by a quarter, with our new RGB LED systems running at just 14.4W/m.”
Meadowhall opened in September 1990 and was then the UK’s second largest shopping centre covering 140,000m of floor space with more than 280 stores attracting around 30m visitors each year. It is this sort of platform that interests lighting designers who are rethinking many of the original lighting designs of the past 20 years in retail installations.
