5 September 2024 In Circular Lighting Report By Ray Molony

The NHS Trust responsible for St Thomas’ Hospital in London has reused and upgraded luminaires on the site.

Trojan Lighting reconditioned ageing fluorescent lights in situ, installing a LED gear tray with a Mymesh intelligent node.

The engineer responsible for the project, engineering site lead David Crane, says the initial reason for keeping the lights in place was because disturbing the metal-integrated ceiling in the hospital’s wards would have been disruptive to patients. ‘We didn’t start out to do a ‘sustainable’ project,’ he told the Circular Lighting Report, ‘so the sustainability is really a side benefit.’

Additionally, the Trust’s interest in the wireless Mymesh system came from Crane’s initial plan to automate the emergency lighting testing and reporting, which was occupying the time of two full-time members of the facilities team.

‘I didn’t want to go a [proprietary] system from a manufacturer because in the public sector we need to have value for money,’ says Crane. ‘What’s good about the Mymesh is that we can use with a luminaire from any manufacturer.’

The medical physics team at St Thomas were initially concerned about radio-frequency interference with clinical equipment but after extensive trials, the technology was approved for use in the hospital.

The upgrade of the outdated luminaires in the wards allowed the engineering team to add intelligence to the gear tray during the work. This gave the NHS Trust additional control, which connected the Mymesh nodes in the lights to occupancy sensors.

‘It’s very flexible so can programme a luminaire to either dim or switch off, depending on where it is in the hospital’

The NHS is rolling out the technology across the extensive St Thomas’s site with plans to extend it to sister facility Guy’s Hospital.

It is also beginning to be used at Lewisham Hospital, where Crane reports that energy savings of 66 per cent have been realised by a combination of LEDs and 1,000 new occupancy sensors.

‘The savings were incredible’ says Crane, who installed energy meters on dedicated lighting power distribution boards three months before the project and monitored it for six months after the project.

• Trojan Lighting and Mymesh are two of the headline backers of Circular Lighting Live 2024, Recolight’s flagship conference and exhibition, which takes place on Wednesday 9 October 2024 at the Royal College of Physicians in London. Free to specifiers, Circular Lighting Live 2024 will feature leading experts, specifiers and policy makers who will share their insights into forthcoming standards and legislation, emerging technologies and new business models. More info: www.circularlighting.live

Picture: Adrian Pingstone/WikiMedia Commons 2004