LEDtronics, the nation’s leading designer and manufacturer of energy-saving
LED lighting products, has completed a significant eco-friendly pendant lighting
project at the Pasadena Central Library that will save the City of Pasadena thousands
of dollars, according to city officials.
“Every light at the library that we replaced was using 900 watts of
ballasted power consumption and we helped reduce that by nearly 90 percent,” says
Pervaiz Lodhie, CEO of LEDtronics. “Not only does the LED lighting in
the pendant fixtures save greatly on power but because of the low heat they
generate, the room temperature is dramatically reduced so as to save on the
air-conditioning cost.”
The historical pendant lighting fixtures located in the main common areas
of the library were important for the library to retain. Upon consultation
with LEDtronics, Inc., a Torrance, Calif.-based company that started the energy-saving
LED lighting movement in the U.S. nearly 28 years ago, a high-power LED cluster
designed for retrofit into the pendant fixtures was successfully implemented,
without compromising the library’s historical integrity.
The library’s 900-watt, energy-inefficient metal-halide lighting was
replaced in each pendant fixture by a 95-watt LED cluster product.
The major concern for the Pasadena Central Library and the City was to reduce
burdensome maintenance and power consumption costs as well as to improve the
quality of lighting. Since the old metal-halide bulbs were buried within the library fixture's
pendant bowl, most of their lumen production was being dampened, and what
light intensity was left over was inefficiently bouncing off the upper reflector
surface of the pendant fixture to create ambient lighting for the library
patron areas. By having the newly installed 95-watt LED cluster of light
project upwards from the top of the pendant bowl directly into the upper
reflector surface, the library actually achieved higher task area footcandle
measurements than with the use of the old bulbs.
In addition, there was a 17-watt LED lamp placed at the top of the pendant
fixtures to produce required uplight to the high ceiling above the pendant
lamps. Most importantly, beyond the increased lighting performance, the City
is able to save 788 watts for each of 30 reworked pendant fixtures. For the
library’s weekly hours of operation, that equates to approximately 50,000
KwH in annual energy savings just for the pendant lamps.
Moreover, the City of Pasadena points out that the high cost of maintaining
the hard-to-reach suspended fixtures is virtually eliminated, as the old metal-halide
bulbs and ballasts no longer need to be replaced on a continuing basis. This
represents an additional annual savings of thousands of dollars for periodic
bulb and ballast replacement that the City would otherwise need to schedule.
The City of Pasadena decided on the project partly due to the success of the
LEDtronics-manufactured LED ceiling panels installed two and a half years ago
in the downstairs document room at the library. The 40-watt LED ceiling mount
panels replaced the old 90-watt ballasted fluorescent fixtures, during the
course of a refurbishment project in mid-2008. Ever since, the LED panels have
been operating continuously for at least eight hours per day, a minimum of
five days per week.
Close observation has shown that there has been no diminishment of LED light
intensity since that time, thus producing more energy savings at the library,
and proving once again the sustainability of well engineered premium LED products.
The LED revolution is upon us. Every day, more companies, municipalities and
other government agencies across the nation are converting to energy-saving,
eco-friendly, environmentally-safe LEDs as the 2012 mandate for phasing out
traditional incandescent bulbs inches closer.
