Project Detail
MK Highways is a collaborative partnership between Milton Keynes Council and contractor partner, Ringway Infrastructure Services. They manage Milton Keynes 56,000 street lights, where many of the assets are well past their 40-year design life and costly to repair. Upgrading to LED is an essential improvement programme to maintain and future-proof the service.
Having first found out about INDO’s unique products at the HEA, Milton Keynes were keen to trial Direct Drive. They wanted a long life residential lantern to replace over 7000 existing 35W and 55W SOX and 50W SON street lights throughout selected parts of the network and using existing column positions. The client’s primary objectives were to achieve the maximum possible energy and maintenance savings at the lowest whole life cost.
INDO was closely involved with the client throughout the 2 year project, maintaining strong communication and post-delivery support across all our points of contact. Over 7200, 25W INDO AIR1+ and AIR1 DALI units were supplied with integrated photocell. These Direct Drive® lightweight, low windage lanterns were selected to ensure the structural integrity of the column as well as giving excellent energy savings, long and reliable lifetime, reduced maintenance and compatibility with the Harvard CMS already deployed.
79% annual energy savings and 65% annual maintenance savings have reduced the councils annual expenditure significantly, with no future driver costs to factor in. Residents of the council now have a robust lighting system that benefits from a genuine design life of over 25 years.
“This is a completely new way to bring in more cost savings and further efficiencies” notes Gary Thorne, Street Lighting Contracts Manager for MK Highways. “By using Direct Drive, we are delivering a best-practice upgrade project and can clearly demonstrate the value added and cost saving results achievable. For example, small details can make a big difference on these large-scale projects; so, the reduced size and weight of INDO’s fitting means more can be stored in the vehicle to be installed. That increases productivity.”
MK Highways saw the potential not only to save energy but also to cut whole-life maintenance costs – keeping future expenditure under complete control and eliminating foreseeable risk for the scheme’s lifetime.
The INDO AIR fitting has been a great success; it works really well and our client is very happy with the product having received the least amount of complaints so far of all lanterns installed in Milton Keynes