The green agenda dominates the UK building and construction sector, in particular the redevelopment of the country's educational establishments. The Building Schools for the Future programme is the biggest single Government investment in improving school buildings for over 50 years. Its aim is to rebuild or renew every single secondary school in England over a 10 to 15 year period.
Protecting the environment, sustainable building, saving energy and reducing carbon emissions are the green issues being addressed during this ambitious building programme. Eliminating unnecessary use of lighting is proving to be an effective method of cutting an educational building's carbon footprint.
Systems from Ex-Or automatically control lighting. They enable lights to switch on and off, and dim or brighten, by monitoring the presence of occupants and by measuring the amount of natural light available. Ex-Or's equipment is helping schools and other educational establishments around the UK to cut costs and save energy, and is being incorporated into both newbuild and refurb developments.
Lighting can account for up to half of a typical school's electricity use. With electricity usually accounting for half of the total energy bill there is the potential to save 25 per cent of the entire electricity load.
Building services consultants Pick Everard recently completed the design of all the lighting for a major education PFI project for five schools; luminaires with a value of around £380,000 were supplied by Concord:marlin. Individual schools include Lakeside Primary School and Da Vinci Community College in Derby where the lighting is being controlled by Ex-Or LightSpot presence-detecting controls
Ex-Or has completed a contract to install lighting management systems throughout the prestigious West London Academy. Areas where lighting is controlled by Ex-Or include offices, classrooms, performance arts theatre and a sports. It is estimated lighting control is delivering a 45% saving of the electrical load at the West London Academy.
Ex-Or has also won the contract to supply lighting controls throughout the University of Manchester, the country's largest single-site higher education institution, for the next three years. The University is embarking on one of the biggest programmes of capital investment seen in British higher education. It is spending £350m to deliver eight new buildings and 15 major refurbishment projects by 2010. Faced with escalating energy costs of up to 80%, and the requirement to reduce carbon emissions, the University of Manchester sees energy conservation as a critical factor in its building programme.
