Smart LED Lighting Harvests Daylight to Sustain Headquarters

Headquartered in Cary, North Carolina, LORD Corporation is a diversified technology and manufacturing company developing highly-reliable adhesives, coatings, motion management devices and sensing technologies that significantly reduce risk and improve product performance. With 15 manufacturing facilities and nine R&D facilities worldwide, LORD’s is committed to finding innovative ways to create more sustainable workplaces for its more than 2900 employees.

LORD Corporation began making strides towards more energy-efficient lighting at its main headquarters in 2012, with the completion of their first LEED Certified Gold facility, which features all LED fixtures in its corridor and task lighting, with lighting controls throughout the building. The energy savings seen in the new building exposed a need to begin retrofitting other buildings with more energy-efficient, cost-saving lighting.

LORD turned to LED light manufacturer Cree to help reach the sufficiency the company sought in their lighting fixtures. The company first brought blue LED to the market in 1989 and since has striven to create LED lights that exceed industry standards for brightness and efficiency. Recognizing the revolutionary potential of LED lighting, in 2008 Cree expanded its product lines into LED-lighting applications, and those applications fit perfectly with the vision that LORD had for its building.

“We replaced high wattage fluorescent fixtures with Cree’s CR22 architectural LED troffers with SmartCast Technology,” says John Gardiner, facilities manager at LORD Corporation’s headquarters campus. “We knew that switching to LED fixtures would reduce our energy consumption on its own, but the addition of SmartCast Technology lighting controls allowed us to improve on what we were already saving.”

In addition to the high-performing, energy-efficient CR22 troffers, Cree’s new SmartCast Technology provides a level of control and flexibility to LED lighting.

“SmartCast Technology really sets itself apart from other lighting controls we’ve installed because it’s programmable on its own network with a handheld configuration tool,” says Gardiner. “With other lighting control systems, we have to call a technician out to reprogram when necessary, which costs us thousands of dollars each time. The savings we see from being able to program the system ourselves is a win-win for us.”

When building LORD Corporation’s North Carolina campus, considerable attention was given to the orientation of each building in relation to sun exposure. The headquarters building retrofitted with Cree fixtures and SmartCast Technology is oriented on an east/west axis, and is subject to high incidences of outdoor lighting. This increased level of natural daylight makes the daylight harvesting feature of SmartCast Technology extremely important in maximizing energy savings.

“Daylight harvesting is very important to us,” Gardiner says. “SmartCast Technology allows us to utilize it within individual offices, which we’ve not been able to do with other lighting control systems. Daylight harvesting is a key component of saving energy costs and resources, especially when so much time and effort has been invested in the orientation of our buildings.”

As LORD has changed been changing out lights they have increasingly found an increase in brightness, noting that the light is much whiter and much cleaner to work in. They daylight harvesting allows for lights to self-dim and even turn off to maintain a constant illumination level from morning to afternoon to evening. Adding quality of light to the cost benefits of the LED lighting with SmartCast technology has not only helped the company build toward their goal of sustainability, but has improved the quality of their facilities at the same time.