Whitecroft Lighting has designed and developed a versatile and energy efficient lighting system for the sales floor of the Tesco store in Gloucester. Working closely with the Tesco design team, Whitecroft came up with a solution that would meet all of the requirements of the scheme, including the required illuminances of 900 lux during trading hours and 300 lux for shelf filling and cleaning. Tesco at Gloucester Business Park is a new development that opened in October 2006. It has a retail area of 5,574m2 (60,000ft2) and required a lighting system that would enhance the shoppers' experience and show goods off to best effect, while providing Tesco with significant savings in running costs.
The chosen solution uses specially adapted Aerial luminaires, modified from the standard product, each luminaire fitted with either 6x or 4x 80W T5 fluorescent lamps, as well as DSI (digital serial interface) dimming control gear, integral panel plugs, connection leads and suspension.
In order to provide a high level of zoned control 16 of the fittings were designated as 'Master' luminaires – each fitted with two light sensors and additional switching relays. Each master luminaire is connected to a number of 'Slave' luminaires, the exact number varying to suit each space, to create 16 separate control zones. Using its integral sensors and switching relays, each master luminaire is able to independently control the light levels in specific zones in response to natural daylight levels and the time of day.
The dimming control system automatically adjusts the light output of each luminaire in the zone to take account of natural daylight and lumen output, so that significant energy savings are achieved by optimising the lighting levels according to real time conditions. Further savings are achieved by the ability to set-back to lower lighting levels outside normal trading hours, while ensuring staff have sufficient light to perform key tasks.
Another significant element of the design was to carefully coordinate the position of luminaires to maximise the light onto the merchandise by centering them in each of the sales aisles. Furthermore, in circulation aisles the fitting has been reduced without detriment to a 4 lamp version to give further economy. Ian Loader, Sales Director Retail Division at Whitecroft, commented "This project has an innovative use of a simple and integrated lighting control solutions to provide a flexible and responsive installation that will ensure ongoing energy savings and low cost of ownership. In addition, the overall lighting scheme is visually very comfortable, with high vertical illuminances and accurate colour quality over all of the differing merchandise zones".
