Recently, one of our franchisees, Mead Noss, the owner of Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Colorado, finished a really interesting install that combined three different “green” trends right now: LED lights, solar power, and Dark Sky Friendly lighting.
Before sharing the details of the installation, I’ll tell you a little bit about these three trends. LED stands for light emitting diodes and is a light source that consumes less energy and has a longer life than other light sources. Solar power has been in the news for quite some time for its ability to convert the sun’s rays into electricity, thus, minimizing energy cost. Finally, the dark sky movement aims to find a balance between appropriate outdoor lighting and the ability to view the stars at night. When lighting systems are not properly designed, wasted light may shoot up into the sky, making it difficult to see the stars. Dark Sky Friendly lighting generally has to shoot light below the horizontal plane to avoid this wasted light.
To be honest, I’ve always thought of these three ideas separately, but when Mead told me how he used all three applications at once, it made complete sense. Outdoor Lighting Perspectives was brought in to light two entryways to a community located out of Denver. The community has an active elk herd (elk often rub their antlers on different objects ruining whatever it rubs against) and a dark sky ordinance in place. On top of all that, the fixtures would need to withstand hurricane force/jet-stream winds and one of the entryways was without power. That’s a lot of prerequisites. Luckily, Mead came up with a perfect solution.
To handle the lack of power, Mead installed a solar photo voltaic product that was mounted higher than the elk’s antlers would reach. This was used to power one cooper LED fixture that was mounted to shine downward onto the entrance sign, complying with their dark sky ordinance. It is a great example of the perfect application in a difficult situation. Congrats Mead!