In July, the Mayor of the City of Port Phillip, Councillor Julian Hill, unveiled a world first in public lighting on the City’s popular foreshore.The ‘DIO light’ public lighting along the foreshore reduceselectricity consumption by up to 80 percent, significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and reduces visual pollution by providing directed light.
Councillor Julian Hill said that Port Phillip was extremely proud to take on the leadership role in this financially viable lighting technology that is set to revolutionise public lighting.
“This is absolutely cutting edge lighting because it saves energy, greenhouse gas emissions, maintenance costs, and waste going to landfill,” he said. “It also reduces light pollution experienced by many residents, that is caused by lighting spill from conventional methods of lighting.”
Councillor Julian Hill said Council planned to retrofit 290 lights along the foreshore and would eventually replace all public lights under its control with DIO lights.
“Installing just 290 DIO lights saves 110 tonnes of CO2 gases and $36,368 per year,” he said. The lighting, developed by Showers International, has been four years in research and development.
DIO lights are impact and moisture resistant and provide light with reduced heat, so do not attract insects, which cause ongoing contamination and damage problems in conventional lighting. Additional benefits of the DIO lights is that they do not create shadows for people to hide in and allow for both brightness and direction control of lighting.
Port Phillip’s Environmental Projects Officer, Anton Rossi-Mel, is delighted with the DIO lights.
“From an environmental view, the DIO lights are excellent, as they reduce energy requirements, green house gas emissions and light pollution,” he said.“Another benefit of the lights is the fact that they do not contain mercury, which is damaging to our water ways.”
Councillor Hill said that Port Phillip staff had been major contributors in the development process. “Thanks to their advice, the DIO lights can be retrofitted to existing lighting structures and the power adaptor is located in the base of the pole so that all maintenance occurs on the ground, eliminating the need for technicians to climb ladders to change light globes,” he said. “The DIO lights have a life of anywhere between 100,000 to a million hours with each DIO tile holding 18 DIOs.
“It’s not anticipated that Council will have to change the DIO tile in my life time!” Councillor Julian Hill said that this leading edge advance in technology, developed by an Australian company, had already attracted a huge amount of interest from Councils and organisations around Australia.
“In fact, when the first shipment of Port Phillip’s four hundred lights arrived, one organisation offered to pay double the price just to get hold of them,” he said.“However, I’m told that the City of Port Phillip’s long association with Showers International ensured that they were delivered as addressed.”
David Showers, Managing Director of Showers International, applauded the City of Port Phillip in its pursuit of energy reduction initiatives.
“It has been a pleasure and a bonus for our business to work with Port Phillip on the design of the DIO lights,” he said. “Frank Flynn, Council’s Building Maintenance Officer, noted that one particular innovation that will bring savings to everyone, was the idea to install the power adaptor in the base of the light pole to reduce maintenance and risk costs.”
DIO lights are made exclusively for Showers International by LumiLeds, a joint venture between Agilent Technologies (formerly Hewlett-Packard) and Philips
.
For further information visit www.myshowers.com, or contact David Showers, telephone (03) 9872 4844.
