The project was conceived by UEL’s Sustainability department, who secured a grant from a Government led funding initiative.
The scheme is known as Salix – Solving Energy Efficiency Finance in the Public Sector.
UEL received £485,000.
Why LED lights (Light-emitting Diodes)?
The introduction of LED lighting is set to improve the lit environment and help save the worlds valuable energy sources.
Light affects our well-being more than you may realise. It commands our body clock, regulating our sleep-wake cycle, immune responses, appetite and many more behaviours. Next to this, light has acute effects on mood, alertness and attention, all essential to the learning environment.
LED lighting is brighter and slightly ‘bluer’ on the colour spectrum, which affects the body’s hormone release. Blue light inhibits melatonin release which is the hormone in charge of making you feel tired. When this is inhibited we feel more alert, active and it gives us an overall sense of well-being LED also offers 50% energy saving on average, vastly reducing the energy consumption on campus. To put this saving into perspective, the current phase of LED lighting, some 4000 fittings, has saved enough energy to light 200 homes or 600 flats for a whole year! (Based on figures from the Department of Energy & Climate Change: Energy Consumption in the UK (2015).
Add on to this the reduction in Carbon emissions by 400 tonnes, which is the equivalent to flying 200 people around the world 4 times over (based on figures from carbonindependent.org).
The brilliance and benefits of LED have been recently recognised with the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Physics to inventor of the blue LED chip, Shuji Nakamura of the University of California ‘for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources’
Staff and students were welcomed back to a brighter more energy efficient Campus after their summer recess.
Acknowledgements of the project team:-
| UEL Maintenance | Jose Garcia & Alan Grieves |
| UEL Sustainability | Amy Butterworth |
| Wellesley | External Project Manager, Cost Control & Safety Coordinator |
| Promode | External Technical Consultant |
| R Dunham (UK) Ltd | Electrical Contractor |
| JCC Advanced Lighting | Light Manufacturer |