Stone Brewing Company — which has been brewing craft beers in its Escondido, California, production facility for more than 16 years — recently installed an intelligent LED high-bay lighting system in an addition to the plant that cut its lighting costs by 79%.
The addition’s original design plans called for the installation of traditional T8 florescent lighting, but company owners thought there might be an opportunity to reduce its carbon footprint and reduce utility costs at the same time, according to Joshua Lichtman, Stone Brewing’s associate project manager.
“We were surprised by the range of energy savings among the technologies as well as the differing levels of quality, integration and control,” Lichtman said. “The new system uses occupancy and daylight sensors to automatically delivery light when and where it is needed, based on parameters we’ve set and control.”
Intelligent LED Lighting System
Among the new lighting systems features are LEDs with add-on sensors and intelligent LEDs with integrated controls. These help make the facility’s lights operate more efficiently while still providing plenty of light to keep operations flowing smoothly.
For example, when the sun is shining — as it usually is in Southern California — the building’s windows and skylights provide 100% of the lighting and the intelligent LEDs are dimmed completely. If cloud cover moves in or it becomes evening, the lighting system can automatically respond by providing more light so workers never notice the difference.
Instant Access to Key Data
The system that was installed also includes tools that provide metered data managers can use to keep tabs on how efficiently the lighting is performing. They have immediate access so such information as kilowatts per hour, occupancy patterns and how much money they are saving due to daylight harvesting.
The lighting system also has integrated software tat helps configure its timeout settings to reflect real-time usage patterns. Managers can program the software so that it provides different lighting volumes at different times, such as “cleaning”, “brewery tours”, or “production” hours. These lighting levels can be automatically set for days or weeks ahead of time.
Pays for Itself in Less than Two Years
Stone Brewing has saved an estimated 86% of the annual energy costs it would have spend had it installed the T8 florescent lights it originally planned on using, including avoiding re-lamping, re-ballasting and mercury disposal costs. This savings means that the new system will effectively pay for itself in just 1.77 years.
Michael Feinstein, vice president of sales and marketing for Digital Lumens, the company that installed the LED lighting, said Stone Brewing is just the latest in many companies that are recognizing the value of energy-efficient lighting.
“Intelligence-driven efficiency is enabling facilities traditionally burdened by high lighting-related energy costs to slash usage up to 90% over HID and HIF alternatives while gaining better, higher quality lighting to facilitate their business operations,” Feinstein said in a news release.”The remarkable success of Intelligent LED lighting in a wide range of industrial applications –from manufacturing and warehousing to brewing and bottling — is fueling rapidly increasing adoption rates within the commercial and industrial sectors.
Stone Brewing makes a variety of craft beers and is the 10th largest craft brewer in the US, even though it has no paid advertising or discounting.