Cree has announced plans to convert all lighting at its headquarters and manufacturing facility in Durham, North Carolina, to LED lighting.
The parking lots, entryways, lobby and conference rooms at Cree’s headquarters building are already lit by fixtures containing Cree XLamp LEDs.
A study of the energy usage before and after the lighting conversion indicates that in total the new LED lights use 48% less energy than the incandescent, fluorescent and high-pressure sodium lights they replaced.
The combination of energy savings, the reduced cost of maintenance and disposal, and the environmental savings demonstrate that LED lighting is now a real alternative to traditional lighting solutions.
Cree’s local utility, Duke Energy, is collaborating with Cree to explore the benefits of LED lighting. “Our customers are always interested in understanding how to save money through energy efficiency, so we make it our business to support innovative technologies such as LEDs,” said Ted Schultz, Duke’s vice president of energy efficiency.
“We expect our energy efficiency plans to be approved next year and are committed to having a complete line of lighting solutions available for customers,” said Schultz. “At that point, we expect to have programs developed that will take advantage of LED technology.”
“Conventional wisdom is that LED lighting is years away from widespread adoption. The truth, however, is that the performance of Cree’s LED technology enables real LED lighting solutions today,” said Chuck Swoboda, Cree chairman and CEO. “The conversion of Cree’s site demonstrates that the LED Lighting Revolution is well underway and will illustrate the benefits in energy savings, maintenance costs and environmental impacts.”
Cree has launched a new website to share the results and implementation details of the LED Workplace lighting conversion with other organizations. The new LED Workplace site, www.ledworkplace.org, will include lighting vendor information and the light, energy and maintenance metrics that form the basis for LED lighting’s cost savings. This site will also feature other LED Workplace installations.
