Lighting up for less at Network Rail’s Liverpool Street Station

Adam Thackeray, Works Delivery Manager for Network Rail, commented, “We decided to move to LED lighting to reduce our carbon output, reduce costs in terms of power consumption and to improve the lighting level and quality in public areas of the station".

"The opportunity to reduce costs for lamp replacement by moving from a two year to a five year cycle was also a significant consideration. LED lighting will also increase the efficiency of emergency lighting, reducing the load on the battery/generators and reduce the temperature signatures of lighting and heat related failures.”

The Goodlight LED lamps can easily be retro-fitted into the existing fittings, allowing the relamping to proceed with little disruption. Over 3,500 lights were replaced by two teams of two operatives. They worked from two scissor lifts on a permanent night shift during the five hour window offered by station closing hours over a six month period.

Some commuters shared Tweets about the improvement and many of the staff that work at the station expressed appreciation for the improved station environment.

Liverpool Street Station is seeing both an increase in light levels and a reduction in energy demand following the relamping with Goodlight LED. The station has measured an increase in Lux levels on the platforms and concourse, from approximately 75 Lux with the old lighting to 210 Lux with Goodlight.

At the same time there has been a temperature drop of approximately 40 degrees centigrade at the exterior of the globe fixtures, which should improve reliability as well as efficiency.

During the replacement of the concourse lighting in particular, maintenance teams noticed that there was a lot of the discolouration around the lamps and reflectors caused by heat produced by the old fluorescent lamps and control gear. This illustrates both the amount of waste heat generated and the issues it was causing.

The energy saving from the new lights is over 800,000 kWh per year from the platform globe fixtures alone. Adam Thackeray estimates that the new LED lighting uses about half the energy of the old lights, and will pay for itself in just 12-18 months.