Customer: SunWest Aviation
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Facility Size: 51,200 ft2
Environment: Aviation Hanger
Installation Type: Retrofit
Lighting Choice: DLE Intelligent LED High-Bay Luminaires
IIoT Solution: SiteWorx Tune
Energy Savings: 86% in Lighting
Digital Lumens’ Wireless Sensor Network Enables Advanced Lighting and Instruments for the IIoT
Based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Sunwest Aviation provides its customers with a full range of business aviation services which include charter, aircraft management, cargo, fractional ownership, aircraft sales, and acquisitions and consulting services. When the 1,000-watt metal halide luminaires in two of the four Sunwest Aviation aircraft hangars started to wear out and became so noisy they gave some employees headaches and forced others to wear earplugs, Ground Operations Manager, Tim Piper sought a better solution. Because the Provincial Government incentivizes businesses with rebates to outfit their facilities with sustainable lighting solutions, Tim knew efficiency would be a top criterion. In order to increase workplace comfort and ultimately productivity, Sunwest Aviation needed LED luminaires and lighting controls that made minimal noise.
Why Digital Lumens?
With those objectives in mind, Digital Lumens was the clear choice to retrofit solutions for the 51,200 ft2 Sunwest Aviation facility thanks to its Intelligent LED Luminaires. DLE Intelligent LED High-Bay Luminaires, provide superior efficiency and control in the most demanding customer environments and are also a high-performance alternative to the uncontrolled LED, fluorescent, and HID high-bay luminaires. DLE luminaires are incredibly flexible thanks to:
- Lumen output from 12,521 to 54,830 lm
- Narrow, Wide, Aisle, and Diffuse optic options
- Rotatable light bars and direct/indirect lighting Distribution options for uniform lighting across both ceilings and workspaces
Every Digital Lumens luminaire, including the DLE, contains embedded sensors which work in tandem with advanced software applications to instrument facilities for the Industrial IoT and provide value beyond illumination. SiteWorx Tune, Digital Lumens’ IIoT lighting control application, uses smart sensors and advanced, cloud-based software to maximize energy savings, improve productivity, and maintain safe, comfortable light levels.
The Results
Through the combination of DLE intelligent LED luminaires, and SiteWorx Tune, Tim was able to implement advanced lighting strategies such as task tuning and progressive dimming to drive a drastic reduction in lighting energy usage and spend. The company saved 86% on their lighting energy costs and are on track to save 45,286 kilowatt hours (kWh) annually. “The system exceeds my expectation with the savings. You really don’t know how much energy you’re using until you look at the math” says Piper. Sunwest Aviation can now illuminate specific areas within each hangar, like the main walkways, only when there is activity, instead of choosing between shutting the lights off completely or running them continuously. Energy use verification and robust reporting functionality also allow Sunwest Aviation to effectively monitor real-time electricity usage and compare it with historical data points to identify trends, anomalies, and opportunities for further savings.
Those up-to-the-minute reporting capabilities help Tim to easily provide accurate, real-time, and historical updates to his CEO and CFO. With the extremely quiet DLE luminaires, productivity and employee comfort has improved, as team members no longer experience headaches from light luminaires sounds and can more easily communicate with each other across the hangar. Thanks to the significant increase in energy savings, and a positive response by employees to the quieter workspace, Sunwest Aviation plans to retrofit the rest of their hangars — another 51,200 ft2 — with DLE luminaires and SiteWorx Tune.