LIGHTING EFFICIENCY

LIGHTING EFFICIENCY How to reduce emissions and costs while boosting efficiency by improving port lighting

By Rory McBride Maritime Manager, U.S. Midstream Lighting

Environmental regulations and incentives, in the U.S. and other jurisdictions, will only continue to grow in influence in the coming years. Alongside this, demand-side pressure on the shipping industry is becoming more acute as ship and cargo owners are being held accountable for their emissions by their customers. Targets to make further reductions are also becoming more ambitious. Together, these forces are already making emissions and energy efficiency an important KPI for ports.

Creating the infrastructure to enable ports to progress towards their environmental goals as well as operating more efficiently, safely, and profitably, is a challenging process, especially identifying where to prioritize investment. Indeed, it seems unlikely that anyone can currently give a definitive answer on which technologies and processes will be the standard by 2040. The exception to this rule is lighting, where greener and more cost-efficient technology is being implemented today, delivering better operational and safety standards now and in the future.

Environment or economics?

The factors that drive any port’s commercial strategy are unique to some degree. For some, stakeholder pressure and current rules or incentives have made energy efficiency a priority. We are seeing several U.S. ports, such as the Port of Houston and the Port of Seattle embarking on cleaner initiatives after facing increasing community pressure.

On a global level, these drivers are sparking wider industry collaborations such as EcoPorts, and have driven landmark investments in environmental projects as well as new technology.

Yet, the commercial reality is that not all ports are able to view environmental stewardship as a top priority. Where margins are particularly small, or where demand and regulation-side environmental pressures are less acute, capital expense (CAPEX) and operating expense (OPEX) are the biggest drivers for these investment decisions.

Often this means that technologies associated with progressive ‘terminals of the future’ are not feasible. Big ticket changes, such as port electrification and AI, represent huge investments and particularly long payback periods. Also, these kinds of changes can be deemed to be a distraction from more accessible and impactful steps that deliver today, while acting as an enabler for future development.

The holy grail for many of these port operators is an investment that requires little CAPEX, causes minimal disruption, and can have a dramatic and immediate impact on OPEX, as well as opening further OPEX savings in future.

Sustainable lighting

Port modernization projects can start relatively small and expand in line with needs, ambitions, and budgets. Undertaking a detailed evaluation of a port’s existing infrastructure is the best place to start, allowing an operator to highlight where small, incremental changes can be easily made based on cost or emissions reductions benefits.

This is especially true for lighting, which is often an underappreciated asset despite accounting for a large portion of a port’s energy consumption and OPEX. Many ports and terminals today still use high-cost and high-power-use lighting solutions, such as high-pressure sodium, metal halide, or other similarly dated technologies.

Often, a port’s procurement team will assume that the CAPEX associated with replacing those out-dated systems would not be justified. Yet, high-quality LED lighting can have a dramatic impact on energy consumption – as well as on improving the efficiency of operations in general.

To put this into perspective, a metal halide lamp could deliver a high lumen output in the short term but will typically lose around 20 percent of its lumen output in the first six months while still requiring the same amount of energy. This means that ports must either install costly redundancy that ensures lighting levels do not fail and continue to use significantly more energy than required. Or they must tailor and slow down their operations to accommodate delivering operations in worse quality light.

In contrast, LED lighting does not significantly degrade like older systems. LEDs reduce energy consumption by over 70 percent, even without accounting for the extra, unusable capacity some ports still must install to deal with falling light levels. The solution is superior in relation to cost, lifespan, and energy efficiency.

While reducing energy usage, LED lighting also delivers greater visibility through higher-quality and clearer light, increasing light levels by up to - and in some cases, above — 50 percent. This quality light can extend the window in which a port can operate during bad weather, and significantly increase productivity and safety at night.

Together, this means that a welldesigned LED lighting system provides a powerful and sustainable solution while dramatically cutting OPEX. In fact, based on energy savings alone, replacing an old system with LED lighting will pay for itself within 18 months. When you add the other connected benefits of good lighting to that equation — of better operational performance, safety,

Creating the infrastructure to enable ports to progress towards their environmental goals as well as operating more efficiently, safely, and profitably, is a challenging process, especially identifying where to prioritize investment.

and security — you have a port that is better equipped to start tackling the decarbonisation challenge.

Tested, verifiable savings

It can be notoriously difficult for buyers to accurately model potential CO2 savings associated with big investments. However, at Midstream we have built a clear evidence base through years of successful projects and the data that comes from them.

One recent example stems from a project we completed at a port in Southern California. Our Atlas series of LED floodlights enabled not only huge energy savings but an increase in light levels. The upgrade to the luminaries reduced the port’s energy use by 2.8 million kWh a year, and over 10 years they would have eliminated more than 10.800 tonnes of CO2.

We achieved similar success in our recent work upgrading Hupac Terminal’s outdated metal-halide lighting systems on its cranes with 120 of our Docker 350 and 150 luminaires. This improved lighting levels, allowing Hupac to implement other operational changes, and reduced energy usage by 65 percent.

These energy savings are repeated, even in the harshest of conditions. A recent installation in the Port of Aarhus, Denmark’s largest commercial port, had to be integrated with other types of lighting systems and lighting controls in sub-zero temperatures and high levels of humidity and salinity. Our bespoke solution saw 230 LED floodlights installed as part of a new quay extension.

Given just how busy the Port of Aarhus is, the operational benefits associated with better lighting – including reducing the risk of incidents that can cause bottlenecks and extending working hours during bad weather — have had a tangible impact on performance. At the same time, the system has delivered a 35 percent reduction in energy consumption and a payback period of less than two years.

Navigating incentives

The reduction in energy costs associated with LED lighting has a dramatic impact, regardless of any incentive. Payback periods of less than two years speak for themselves. However, CAPEX requirements can pose challenges — even when a project is developed on a granular level.

Thankfully, LED rebates and energy saving incentives are common across the United States. These city- or state-level schemes can make even a major investment feasible for a cash-poor port seeking to prepare for the future.

Many of these schemes can lead to considerable savings, especially for larger industrial or port settings. One particular example is the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), which has the largest rebate available on the West Coast at $0.24 per KwH saved for customers consuming more than 200,000 KwH/year.

Midstream Lighting recently delivered nearly 900 units of our crane LED, Docker 300, to the West Basin Container Terminal (WBCT) at the Port of Los Angeles. After the rebate was applied, WBCT only had to pay 10 percent of the total product cost to upgrade all 10 of their Ship-to-Shore gantry cranes.

The terminal of tomorrow, today

Tackling seismic issues such as sustainability or modernizing infrastructure can be overwhelming and complex. However, making smaller, incremental investments is crucial for port operators today; by delivering verifiable and rapid cost and emissions reductions, with a short payback period, they can make a near-immediate impact. At the same time, these changes can act as an enabler and the basis for growing confidence in the technologies that will dominate port efficiency and emissions reduction in the decades to come.

Investing in lighting is not only critical to improving performance now, but in illuminating the pathway for other areas of improvement and raising the bar for sustainability in the ports sector.

Rory McBride is the Maritime Manager, U.S. for Midstream Lighting — a leading global manufacturer of advanced LED high-mast lighting for the marine port, aviation and sports stadium industries. Rory can be reached at rory.mcbride@ midstreamlighting.com.