Distributing light and containing it within property boundaries are essential components to remaining in compliance with regulatory codes pertaining to dark skies and energy efficiency. The size and layout of your client’s parking lot will often help our design team quickly pinpoint the degree of cutoff and optics type most effective for your project. If a parking lot is asymmetrical and located in a nefarious part of town, the need for security may require you to establish a bright perimeter of light that is focused on the edges and corners of the lot and simultaneously contained within the property line. Light spillage can simultaneously be avoided if you use the correct reflectors and glare shields. Think ahead when designing your parking lot lighting layout. It is only a matter of time before every community in the United States will have some type of light pollution or dark sky law in place.
Outdated fixtures have to be replaced if at all possible with parking lot lights designed specifically for energy efficiently. Our economy could stabilize tomorrow and the market may begin to revive. This is not likely, but possible. Even in such a golden scenario, however, energy efficiency will still remain a top concern in outdoor lighting design. Parking lot luminaires consume a great deal of power, and power is often produced by burning fossil fuels. Energy efficient technology has been created not just to save people money, but just as importantly, to help protect the environment. New, energy efficient lighting plays a vital role in reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. Whenever possible, then, ask about new types of lamps like emerging commercial LED lights and pulse-start metal halides. If applicable to your project, the upfront cost will be paid back to your client by lower electric bills and reduced maintenance and disposal fees.
Pole height restrictions can sometimes throw a veritable monkey wrench into an otherwise perfect parking lot lighting design. Pole heights are sometimes determined for you by wind zone laws that limit poles to a certain maximum height. You may be half way through designing a new parking lot lighting layout when you realize that the poles you want to use cannot legally be installed. In such an instance you may then be inclined to use more poles and more fixtures than you really want to in order to get the foot candle plot that the facility requires for optimal safety and visibility. A better alternative, however, would be to call a lighting design expert who can help you develop a new layout that will combine multiple factors into a more robust and efficient outcome for your client.
A photometric analysis will allow you to develop more than one design option for your client’s parking lot that address all of these concerns with multiple options.
RLLD Commercial Lighting can take simple raw data that you send us and input that data into a lighting design software platform known as AGi32. This 3-D rendering software will show different combinations of wattage, new energy saving equipment engineering, multiple options in optics type, and the appropriate cutoff design for the luminaire housing. Overcoming lighting regulatory codes and pole height restrictions is much easier when we give you more than one solution to propose to your client, and cost effectiveness can be passed on as a value by choosing the fixture designs, unique mounting options, and specific angles of lighting incidence that will most appropriately address your client’s needs in within the boundaries of their budget.
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For more information on parking lot lighting design and parking lot light fixtures visit http://www.rlldesign.com.
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