Multi-facility deployment addresses complex lighting needs

Headquartered in Eugene, Ore., SnoTemp Cold Storage is a family-owned warehousing and distribution company with more than 15 million cubic feet of climate-controlled space under management. Following a series of energy efficiency upgrades, the company’s warehouses now consume 5 million fewer kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity annually.

Lighting improvements (Digital Lumens, digitallumens.com) were a major contributor to the savings, according to Jason Lafferty, vice president and general manager for SnoTemp. Lafferty says work teams love it for the natural quality of light, even in areas of the facility that had previously been very hard to illuminate. Maintenance teams can also modify lighting behaviors without touching a fixture and currently handle fewer disruptive maintenance tasks.

“And management likes it for its ability to collect, analyze and document facility-wide energy use, occupancy patterns and savings down to the individual fixture level,” Lafferty says. “The lighting deployment was a significant win for our organization.”

The intelligent LED lighting system connects the Eugene and Albany facilities, comprised of one new-build and two retrofit installations. The company can now save in excess of 1 million kWh annually in lighting-related energy usage and has reduced heat-related energy loads on refrigeration systems by more than 500,000 kWh annually. By eliminating re-lamping and re-ballasting events, SnoTemp has also saved more than $12,000 in annual maintenance costs.

With wide-open center aisles and stacked bulk storage spaces along the perimeter—sometimes 60 feet away from the center line—maintaining appropriate light levels was difficult. With traditional HID, HIF or HPS lighting, illuminating the vertical stacks forced management to significantly over-light surrounding spaces. The new lights enable the rotation of light bars within each fixture to direct lighting to critical work surfaces. Lights can also turn off or dim when no one is present and automatically inform a meter technician if a fault results in abnormal energy use.