Niedersachsen Ports (NPorts), Smart LED Lighting Pilot at the Port of Emden
Niedersachsen Ports (NPorts) has 15 port locations in Lower Saxony and is the largest operator of public seaports in Germany (NPorts, n.d.). As part of the DUAL Ports project, co-funded by the Interreg North Sea Region Programme 2014 to 2020, NPorts installed a smart LED lighting pilot on a track field of about 19,400 square meters on Eichstrasse in the eastern port area of Emden. Installation was completed in September 2018 and the system was inaugurated in February 2019 (NPorts, 2021).
The pilot uses 81 LED luminaires: 65 on 14 light bridges and 16 on 11 masts. Each luminaire can be controlled individually through a DALI interface, from a PC or smartphone. Controls include a rail contact at the entry switch, a motion detector, nine light sensors, a twilight switch and a digital timer, so that light is dimmed or switched off when the area is not in use (NPorts, 2021).
After several months of monitoring, NPorts estimated annual electricity use of about 8,565 kWh, compared with about 15,049 kWh for a modeled reference system of sodium vapor lamps without controls. This is a reduction of about 43 percent: about 26 percent from the LED lamps and about 17 percent from the smart controls. Staff surveyed found the new lighting more pleasant and reported feeling safer (NPorts, 2021). The report does not give the investment cost or payback period.
Transferability
The NPorts pilot is relevant for DMC ports because it shows how to test smart lighting on one defined area before a wider rollout, and how to separate the saving from LED lamps from the extra saving from controls. Ports should compare against a measured or clearly modeled baseline and record the investment cost so that payback can be judged.
Sources
All information used for this case study was based on publicly available resources.