GM’s Lordstown assembly and stamping complex, home of the North American-market Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan, has converted to LED lighting with a built-in and fully-integrated wireless control system. The conversion, which represents GM’s largest in North America, was conducted with the goal of replacing the existing 40-foot high bay lighting system in the stamping plant with one that provides the same amount of brightness and illumination yet costs less money, consumes less energy, and requires less maintenance.
The plant ended up achieving all three of its goals, including:
- Expected cost savings of $800,000 from replacing 1,328 (1,000 watt) and 283 (400 watt) existing fixtures with 1,246 LED solid-state lighting fixtures ranging from 90 to 360 watts.
- Expected energy consumption reduction of 84 percent, with a CO2 reduction of about 8,500 metric tons.
The new lights are expected to operate maintenance-free for more than 150,000 hours, and are equipped with a fully-integrated and built-in wireless control system, which allows operators to schedule lights in certain parts of the plant at certain intensities to follow production schedules, while dimming fixtures during breaks and between shifts. The plant removed fluorescent night lights and used selected high bay fixtures during non-production hours.
“We saw this project as a great opportunity not only to enhance lighting in our facility and realize significant annual energy and maintenance savings, but also to do our part to reduce our carbon footprint as a company and help General Motors continue to be a leader in innovative, green technology solutions,” said Lordstown Complex manufacturing engineering director Steve Rhoades.
“With 6 million square feet of buildings and lighting, there is a tremendous opportunity to become the benchmark in green energy solutions, as well as save a lot of money,” Rhoades said.
Comments
At the same time GM is requiring their dealers to switch to 100w metal halide fixtures in their showrooms in order to comply with their “EBE” facility program, often from much more efficient lighting such as t-8 fluorescent. Between the lower efficiency and added heat they produce we are using about 50% more electricity to light & cool the same area as the t-8s, that btw were partially paid for by New York State under the NYSERDA program just two years ago. GMs green drive ends at the dealers door.
Hell with savings that is one of the darkest plants I have been in. It just always seems much darker there than most other plants I have visited.
I hope it helps brighten things up more than they have been.
This is old news for me. I have replaced 43 of my 44 lamps at my home with LED bulbs, including two flood lamps and two motion detection lamps in my carport. The only lamp that isn’t LED is a HID sodium lamp that lights up my rear patio with daylight intensity but consumes only 35 watts. When a LED bulb can light up over 2,000 lumens with less than 35 watts, then I will replace that last lamp.
Now if I could replace the fluorescent backlights in my two laptops with a LED backlight, then I will be 100% LED. My two Vizio flat LCD TVs already have LED “Razor” backlights.
Has anyone ever been to The Digital Smoker? 🙂