Energy Efficient Lighting

TAG | railway lighting

Jun/16

22

Paris firm wins contract to supply Li-fi for Metro

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Continued testing on LiFi capabilities are in train prior to a long-anticipated roll-out of the system in Paris Metro stations.

A French firm has won the contract to supply internet-over-lighting technology on the Paris Metro.

The ambitious project – which will allow over two million daily commuters to use lights as a form of Wi-fi, dubbed ‘Li-fi’ – now looks firmly on track. Already La Defense station has been successfully equipped with the tech.

Paris-based Oledcomm, a spin-off of the University of Versailles, won the contract from RAPT to initially supply Li-fi installations in 66 stations across Paris, involving over 250,000 LED luminaires.

The award of the contract by RATP follows an extensive series of test phases before the roll-out goes ahead. The first phase of the work involved a series of evaluations to prove the concept. This work was done in a so-called Fab Lab environment, community-based workshops where entrepreneurs, students, small businesses come together to develop technology.

The system needed to demonstrate that it could deliver on its core promises of a Li-fi installation, especially on four key criteria:

  • The Li-fi can operate within a complex physical environment
  • The system can provide the bi-directional communications needed for a secure internet connection
  • Traffic and security information can be ‘pushed’ to smart phones as necessary
  • A system of audio-messaging could be developed to enable tourists and people with impaired sight to be guided around the tunnels and concourses of an underground station

The Fab Lab process also presented commercial opportunities to other entrepreneurial groups to use the open-source nature of the system to develop apps that could work alongside the core Li-fi service.

Having successfully completed the test-house phase, the next phase of the contract moved into the real world with an installation of Li-fi-enabled LED luminaires at the Metro station at La Defense.

Chosen for its complexity, La Defense provides all of the real-life difficulties that a Li-fi installation will need to overcome if it’s to prove its worth to the transport system operators.

Once all of the testing has been successfully completed and RATP is confident of the platform, it’s expected that Paris will become the first public transportation system in world with Li-fi connectivity.

Oledcomm, formed in  in 2005, installed its first public Li-fi project at the Musee Curtius in Liege in 2012. Since then, the company has gone on to install systems in offices, hospitals, retail stores as well as public street lighting.

Li-fi works by making invisible modulations to the light from a luminaire – invisible to the human eye, but not to the camera on a smartphone, tablet or laptop. The same technology lies behind the positioning systems being used by retailers such as Carrefour and Target, but here it is being used to send data, rather than just to pinpoint someone’s position. Proponents of Li-fi say that it will add enormous capacity to wireless communications, because the visible light spectrum is 10,000 times larger than the radio frequency spectrum that Wi-fi uses. Some also note that it will operate much faster than Wi-fi, and that it will be useful in electromagnetic sensitive areas like hospital, airplanes and nuclear power plants.

It’s currently not clear how devices will communicate back to the lighting on the Paris Metro installation. However, it is relatively straightforward to use different wavelengths for each link direction, i.e., visible light in the downlink (to also serve as illumination) and infrared or even standard Wi-fi in the uplink.

On the downside, Li-Fi signals do not travel as far as Wi-Fi signals do.

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May/15

15

LEDs and controls arrive on the line where Stephenson’s Rocket set off

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Lux reports: An LED lighting system at Rainhill train station in Lancashire has reduced energy use by more than half and attracted positive feedback from employees and customers. The station, one of 464 managed by Northern Rail, is on the line where Robert Stephenson’s pioneering Rocket successfully completed the first locomotive trials in 1829, so a key consideration for the lighting project was the appeal and structural integrity of the historic site.

More recently, the station’s old lighting system had been vandalised and was no longer providing enough illumination in some areas.

‘We wanted to install LED lighting at Rainhill to show that new technology could be fitted in a building of historic interest, running new beside old without detriment to the structure itself,’ said Euan Hilton, utilities, contracts and data manager at the station’s operator, Northern Rail.

The chosen supplier for the new lights, together with a control system using motion sensors, was UK manufacturer Dexeco Solutions, part of the Dextra Group (which was named Manufacturer of the Year at the2014 Lux Awards).

The installation is a rare example of a rail operator embracing lighting controls and reaping the benefits. In many cases the complexity of controls, combined with fears about safety, has held the industry back from making the most of possible energy savings.

Dexeco used a different product in each of the station’s four areas: Impervia LED columns with infrared motion sensors on platform columns; vandal-resistant Eco Impervia LEDs with the same sensors on the canopy above the platform; MOD LEDs in waiting rooms and offices; and motion-sensing Amenity Plus LEDs in the toilets.

Installation costs were kept down by matching the new LED fittings to existing fittings. Integral sensors in those new fittings meant the light could be controlled without having to install bus wiring or building management system (BMS) controls. Lights in toilets will turn off when nobody is there, and fittings can also respond to daylight and turn off if they’re not needed. A local company, Picow, was responsible for the installation.

Northern Rail has reported a 56 per cent drop in Rainhill’s overall energy since it activated the motion sensors, which ensure the station’s lights only operate at full output when passengers or trains are present. With unoccupied areas lit to minimum safety and security levels, the new system also reduces light pollution.

Hilton said: ‘Customers have already remarked how the station looks and feels so much brighter and that the waiting room is more pleasant to sit in. Our people have also noticed a big change and were surprised how something such as lighting could change their working environment for the better.’

Novel Energy Lighting can assist with your project today, by providing lighting designs, and supply of LED lamps, fittings, and sensors. Call us: 0208-540-8287, or email for more information: sales@novelenergylighting.com

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Apr/15

10

Virgin Trains: LED lighting at stations

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Virgin Trains: LED lighting at stations is as much about customer satisfaction as it is about energy

The LED Express: Virgin Trains East Coast will have soon upgraded the platform and concourse lighting at nine stations. As for the trains themselves, watch for new LED lighting in 2018, when a faster fleet from Hitachi (mock-up pictured) starts riding the rails.

‘I can see clearly now the LEDs have come.’  With apologies to song writer Johnny Nash and singer Jimmy Cliff, that is the tune that passengers on Virgin Trains’ new East Coast franchise are starting to sing now that a £1.5 million platform and concourse lighting overhaul is well under way with energy efficient LEDs.
Picking up where the line’s previous owner left off, Virgin is ripping out the old lighting at nine stations that it manages from as far north as Berwick-upon-Tweed on the Scottish border down to Peterborough, and is also upgrading the lighting at its maintenance depot at London’s King Cross station.
The UK government started the job last August when it still owned and operated the Edinburgh-to-London mainline service, then called East Coast. A joint venture of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and transport firm Stagecoach won the franchise in November, and began operating it at the beginning of March.
The newly branded Virgin Trains East Coast is committing £140 million in upgrades to the line, an amount that should help buoy the £1.5 million lighting project, which is already complete at  the Durham and York stations.
Round up the usual benefits, and more
While Virgin expects the lighting to achieve all of the standard LED benefits  such as reduced energy and maintenance bills and the elimination of mercury-containing fluorescent lights,  it is equally emphasising that the new lighting marks a big improvement in light quality.
Doncaster diodes:  A new LED light on the platform one recent morning in Doncaster.
And that translates into big improvements in customer satisfaction and safety, which passengers are alredy reporting in early surveys.
‘It’s really important  to stress that whilst new LED lighting comes with obvious environmental benefits in terms of energy costs and the life of the fittings, we’ve also been very keen to stress the customer satisfaction and safety  benefits,’ said Tim Hedley-Jones, Virgin Trains East Coast’s major projects director. ‘Replacing lighting is just as important as refurbiishing a facility or putting in a new facility at a station in terms of how a customer feels at that location.’
Tangible intangibles
Noting that customer satisfaction is ‘a bit of an intangible’, Hedley-Jones elaborated on what makes successful night lighting.
‘What we find is that once we’ve done the replacement of the lighting, effectively you’re replicating a daylight scenario at the station,’ he said. ‘That’s been the anecdotal feedback from people – it is a much clearer environment at the station…It’s about how someone feels when they’re at a station. We all know how good we feel generally when the sun shines or when we’re out in the daylight.
‘So I think its about sort of getting into some of the slightly harder to pin down aspects of human behaviour that respond well to  high levels of light and to things being bright. We’ve also been doing a painting programme at some of our stations. So when you combine a bit of lighting with improved painting, you really get a feel good factor amongst customers…So customer satisfaction is a really important aspect of doing this project. It’s not just about being a good environmental custodian.’
Safe talk
The safety aspect is easier to pinpoint.
‘We have customers at our stations who perhaps may be carrying lots of luggage, or they may be older people, or people with young children,’ he noted. ‘Quite often they find that stations can be slightly dark, or perhaps the way to go is not clear. What we find is that once we’ve done the replacement of the lighting, again, you’re effectively replicating a daylight scenario at the station. So again there’s a real safety benefit to stop people tripping over or having accidents because they didn’t see something.’
Virgin expects to wrap up all nine stations by the end of the summer. It is close to finishing at Peterborough, Newcastle, Grantham, Doncaster and Newark, and will then move on at Berwick and Darlington. It is not upgrading lighting at a few of its smaller stations, or at Wakefield, a new station that already has modern illumination.
Virgin is refraining from installing high levels of intelligent lighting system in which, for example platform lights would remain off when not needed, and turn on when sensors detect people on the platform, because such systems could confuse train drivers.
‘These are places which are operational bits of the railway, where we have to be very careful about sort of having lights flickering on and off if there are trains coming through and obviously there’s signalling and things like that,’ Hedley-Jones explained. ‘So in this case it’s not necessarily appropriate for there to be that sort of a facility on the concourse or the platforms.’
Sensors would be more appropriate in areas like toilets or back offices, but the 9 station upgrades are focused only on concourses and platforms. Wakefield, the new station, already includes sensors in those areas, Hedley-Jones said.
As for the trains themselves: Watch for improved interior lighting in 2018, when a new fleet of trains from Japan’s Hitachi are due to come into service (the same trains shoud come online on First Great Western service in the south and west in 2017). Those will include LEDs from LPA Excil. If they allow lighting levels to tone down and warm up according to the time of day, then passengers might just find they have something else to sing about.

Novel Energy Lighting works with network rail and other rail contractors. See out Linear High Bay solutions for platforms here.

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