Kent

Home to England’s oldest cathedral, Canterbury, the county of Kent is in the Southeast of England. Unknown to most, with over 120,000 streetlights, it is also one of the largest lighting asset authorities in the UK. With ample assets comes great responsibility. 

Brief &
Requirements

  • Energy-efficient LED
  • ENEC approved luminaires
  • Compatible with the council’s Telematics CMS
  • Reduce maintenance and energy costs
  • Reduce carbon emissions and light pollution
  • Local British manufacture and supply

Solution

The cost of powering and maintaining the lighting was amounting to around £9m annually. To address this and meet its ambitious energy-saving objectives,  Kent County Council launched a three-year LED street lighting upgrade.

Bouygues Energies & Service were appointed after a successful tender bid by the council to manage the installation conversion from HID to LED lanterns.

Mark Bailey Associates approached Acrospire to work with Bouygues Energies & Services and DfL, the council’s design consultant, to roll out over 6,000 new heritage luminaires and retrofit solutions through the town centre, parks, open spaces, and the county’s residential roads.

A range of our heritage lanterns was used to fulfil the project requirements, including Birkdale (Mini, Small and Large) and Muirfield. Outputs varied from 18W – 105W with several RAL colour finishes provided, as standard.

To meet the design spec for restricted roads, where lower mounting heights were needed, we worked with DfL to produce a smaller version of our Birkdale lantern and gained ENEC approval before installation.

Tim Barker Acrospire Managing Director, explains, “This was an innovative, sustainable, and fast-moving contract. In fact, a ground-breaking delivery for the time. Each street had its own design calculations, and products were fine-tuned to ensure they were delivered.

This project was won on firsts and managed through relationships.

Tim, details, “We were proud to be the only UK manufacturer able to provide ENEC certified heritage luminaires at time of order, which was crucial to the specification. We were also the first with an auto disconnect solution within the specified style of luminaires, which appealed to the contractors, along with our ability to provide pre-cabled lanterns (in the various required specified lengths). Our partnership with Telematics further strengthened our bid.”

As a UK manufacturer, we were local to the project and able to keep the lines of communications open. Furthermore, to support the Kent pound, all the optic bowls were vacuum-formed locally. Our proximity to the project meant we could manufacture and deliver over 150 luminaires to spec per week. We even rose to the challenge of 250 lanterns per week in the final quarter of the program, hitting targets of 98% on-time delivery.

In addition to our heritage luminaires, the Acrospire team also developed retrofit solutions for existing contemporary solutions.

The overall LED relighting project has reduced the council’s energy consumption by 27,530,405 kilowatt-hours (kWh) and carbon emissions by 17,744 tonnes.

At the time, we were the only UK manufacturers to offer local authorities’ peace of mind with ENEC certification for the style of lanterns proposed by the client. We were also the first with an auto disconnect solution within a heritage luminaire, which appealed to the contractors, along with our ability to provide pre-cabled luminaires (in their various specified lengths). Our partnership with Telematics further strengthened our bid.

Tim Barker Managing Director