A Thirst for Knowledge: Lighting Systems

At Cura we are always wanting to learn more when it comes to new technology, systems, and solutions that are out there in the industry.

It’s great for us to be able to speak to various businesses and gain a better understanding of their service offerings and the benefits. Knowledge is fundamental to any business growth and if we can share and understand what latest innovation is available then it allows us to be more informed when speaking with our clients and industry contacts.

As part of this journey our first stop is ASG Lighting Solutions. Having spoken to Ellis Titheridge the past few months who has a wealth of experience and knowledge when it comes to lighting solutions, we thought a question-and-answer session was a must!

Heading up the lighting and energy divisions of ASG Lighting Solutions Ltd., Brendon Airey shared his wealth of experience in the lighting controls industry. Read on to learn his thoughts on lighting control….

Question: Please can you provide a brief overview of your role at ASG brief description of your job and what services ASG provide?

Answer: ASG is a new division, running for just over 2 years now. Everything that we do is with the aim of providing functional, compliant, and aesthetically pleasing energy efficient lighting solutions.

At the core of what we do is providing lighting control systems that turn lights off exactly when they need to be turned off with an accuracy that will save you money, lengthen your systems’ life span, and positively impact the local community.

My role within the company consists of a variety of aspects, although it mostly involves client support, innovation, and untangling the mess of traditional lighting controls in buildings.

Question: Is there more a sense of urgency surrounding the upgrading of lighting?

Answer: The lighting that is used in a lot of buildings at the moment (like fluorescent and halogen lighting) is being discontinued in February 2024 as it is now deemed inefficient. This will make buying replacement parts in the future very difficult. In fact, replacements are already getting more expensive. So, really, upgrading is a necessity rather than a luxury.

In the majority of cases, upgrades are more cost effective for the Client (business Clients). Typical ROIs for our installations are usually between 1 and 2 years, with some even as low as 4 months. After that initial period, the lighting will have paid for itself, with the average payback time being just under 23 months.

Question: In your opinion what is the benefit of integrating a BeMS System with your lighting controls?

Answer: Via a gateway, we can enable our lighting systems to talk to BeMS systems. BeMS systems are an integral part of increasing the energy efficiency of Clients buildings. In our opinion a combination of both systems can be a powerful tool.

Question: Explain the advantages of managing your systems remotely?

Answer: With remote-controlled, wireless lighting systems, when one part fails, everything else still works, and any error information is available immediately! We can find out exactly which system has failed before the Client even has identified the issue which is a huge benefit as we want to be informing the Client not vice versa.

The accessibility of remotely logging into a system that can be accessed at a click of a button is where most solution providers are at, which is much more efficient for all parties.

Question: What is one of the most common issues that you are faced with when it comes to projects?

Answer: Ceilings. A lot of the projects that we are looking at now have abnormal ceilings. Often the ceilings have luminaires embedded into their chilled beams where the beams themselves have Air Conditioning inbuilt. Currently there is not an off the shelf product that will go straight into these kinds of units which makes things a bit more complexed and expensive. In some instances we have advised Clients to replace their ceilings as it worked out more cost effective for them in the long run. The costs are obviously worked through and understanding what the implications of that is in comparison to the benefits of the whole project. Now we have been exposed to this issue a few times we are better equipt to deal with this situation if it occurs. It is certainly better to identify this issue early in the quotation stage and before prices increase even further.

Question: Describe for me a recent project where your lighting installation completely transformed a building’s efficiency.

Answer: All of them, really! We generally deal with big skyscrapers or buildings within London. 85% of buildings in London still have traditional light sources, so you can imagine that these projects usually have quite a good pay back.

Now, we’re dealing with a project in Coventry where the ROI (Return on Investment) is 20 months. All in all, they will probably see about 80% of savings in their lighting energy costs moving forward. Most of our car park installations usually have a good ROI. Our most recent one was about 3 and a half months!

Question: Thanks for talking with us today, Brendon. Do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to add?

Answer: I would say that the reason there is such a high demand on our current projects is because a lot of people are uninformed about the discontinuation of their current lighting systems’ supplies. So I would add: if you are a building or business owner… don’t leave it for much longer. The price of LED products is already increasing, and by the time discontinuation arrives in February, they will have increased much further because it will have become a supply-and-demand issue. The cost of doing nothing could end up costing you hundreds of thousands of pounds in the long run.

Companies naturally are looking at various ways to improve efficiencies but what we want to highlight is that by taking that step and making that decision now you can already be on track for a much improved ROI.