James Foster, OCTO National Sales Manager at Ansell Lighting, looks at the role lighting plays in the healthcare sector, and explains how NHS Trusts can begin to transform the energy efficiency of their estate, to the benefit of both service users and staff.
NHS Trusts spend an estimated £500m on energy per year, a figure which is soon likely to be dwarfed due to rapidly rising energy prices.
This can only add to the pressures on organisations which are already managing some of the most challenging estates, working to create safe, functional and supportive environments for the staff who work in them and the service users who rely on them, within seriously constrained budgets.
Lighting might not provide a ‘silver bullet’ when the enormity of the financial pressure is considered as a whole. However, where trusts can find funding for capital improvements, smart lighting can present very real opportunities to make impactful savings.
What is more, it can create spaces which play a subtle but essential role in supporting the wellbeing of staff and patients.
Installing a cloud-hosted smart lighting system, even on a large scale, does not require major infrastructure changes and causes minimal disruption, as there is no hub or wiring to be fitted and modern LED lamps are compatible with all the main voltage systems. They can be retrofitted even into outdated Victorian NHS buildings with relative simplicity.
Energy savings
LEDs turn roughly 70% of their energy into light. In a domestic setting, the Energy Saving Trust has calculated that replacing bulbs low energy LEDs would save around £40 a year on electricity bills so it is easy to imagine the potential savings if that is scaled up to a hospital.
Maintenance is also low-cost as LEDs last for around 30,000 hours without overheating or developing faults.
A smart LED lamp sells for only a couple of pounds more than a standard LED lamp, but offers much more in terms of features and functionality.
A lighting control system such as Octo, used in conjunction with smart LED lamps and sensors, offers a number of functions ideally suited to NHS environments, which have a fluctuating movement of people in multiple diverse areas, all requiring different levels of illumination across a 24-hour period.
Smart sensors offer multiple ways in which energy use can be reduced, all highly applicable to hospitals and other healthcare settings. The Carbon Trust estimates that automatic sensors alone can cut electricity use by up to 40%.
Daylight harvesting
Daylight harvesting employs smart sensors which measure the amount of natural light available and supply just enough electrical light to obtain the required uniform illuminance in a space, optimising energy use.
The levels of artificial light provided will vary greatly between a modern ward with large windows, where LEDs can be dimmed, and smaller consulting rooms where natural lighting is either reduced or non-existent.
Corridor functionality
The corridor function offers extreme flexibility for thoroughfares which are vital to providing a safe and well-lit connection between healthcare departments, and where hospital trusts are required to provide lighting at all times.
Lights along the length of a corridor can be programmed to be dimmed or switched off when nobody is detected in the space, but will instantly provide illumination throughout its length when a person enters one end of the corridor, for the duration of their transit.
Absence and presence detectors
Motion sensors are programmed to detect when somebody enters a room, triggering the luminaires to provide light as long as the room is in use. The minute the person (or people) leaves the room, the lights automatically switch off.
This intelligent use of light would also ensure that NHS Trusts could evidence a sustainable, as well as cost-efficient, approach to energy use.
Lighting for wellbeing
NHS Digital provisionally calculated overall NHS sickness absence rates in January 2022 at 6.7% – costing dearly both in monetary terms and the impact on service delivery – so the health benefits of smart lighting are also worth considering.
Natural light plays a vital role in keeping the circadian rhythm, or ‘body clock’ balanced. A smart lighting control system, with RGB and tunable white LED lights offering millions of different colour settings, can be programmed to mimic natural light over the course of the day, supporting the circadian rhythm.
This is of particular benefit to NHS staff working night shifts. Additionally, cooler colours, which help supress the production of melatonin (the hormone that encourages sleep) and promote a feeling of alertness, could be programmed for staff areas at night-time, while motion sensors would allow for a seamless transition between these areas and dimmed patient rooms.
The creation of spaces that promote wellbeing, and the ease with which smart lighting can be retrofitted, scaled up and flexibly controlled, make it an investment worth investigating, but never more so than when energy costs are set to place an unprecedented burden on NHS Trust budgets.