Kingfisher Lighting’s Principal Project Engineer, Stewart Weaver certainly rose to the challenge and submitted product specification and performance data for the Kaos 1 Road Lantern equipped with the next generation road optic designed specifically for use with  CosmoPolis. This latest generation of optic utilises micro-optic technology to fully utilise this precise light source and its compact size.

Based on a positive review of the proposal, Manjeet Virdee, Lighting Design Manager for Leicester City Council’s lighting team installed a trial lighting scheme on Bruce Street off Narborough Road. This trial replaces an existing scheme reaching the end of its design life using 70w High Pressure Sodium and certainly delivered the required energy savings. Based on circuit watts, the CosmoPolis light source delivers energy savings of up to 43% over 70w SON. Add to this an optimum colour temperature of 2850°K the night time environment has also certainly been enhanced.

Commenting on the trial scheme, Manjeet Virdee¹, Lighting Design Manager for Leicester City Council states, “ We are certainly satisfied with the high specification of the luminaire and to date our initial findings prove the potential energy savings are certainly feasible. We currently have approximately 16,500 luminaires equipped with 70w SON-T. Based on an audit of this lighting stock we identified an initial 500 units which are simply not economically viable to maintain and plan to replace these with CosmoPolis with funding from the ‘spend to save’ scheme.”

Manjeet and his team have certainly taken a considered approach to the replacement programme and expect the replaced lighting stock to achieve a payback within three to four years.

Stewart Weaver adds, “ Hand in hand with the energy savings, given the high colour rendering index (60ra) it has been possible to drop the lighting class to S3 . Going forward this will certainly be a benefit to a wider lighting strategy as the average lighting levels required would be reduced, resulting in fewer fittings or more realistically a lower wattage output.”

Energy consumption associated with UK street lighting and traffic signs in 2008 was estimated at 2.6 Terawatts per hour. Based on a recent report, DEFRA offer three separate forecasts for energy consumption up to 2020 based on differing levels of adoption of energy efficient products². If Leicester City Council’s commitment to sustainability is repeated across all local authorities there is a good chance that we could stabilise our long term energy consumption requirements and ensure a sustainable approach to street lighting.