Abode Apartments

Project scope

The Abode apartments are a premium apartment complex located on the Pacific Highway at St Leonards in Sydney. Completed in 2004, the complex is home to approximately 600 residents. An 18 story west tower and a 10 story east tower housing 190 apartments, a full gym, indoor heated swimming pool & spa.

enLighten Australia completed a retrofit in a neighbouring strata property in early 2012 and was awarded the contract to supply and install LED lighting in the Abode’s fire stairs and underground car park in May 2012. Other resource efficiency projects separately undertaken by the building’s Executive Committee include the installation of LED down lights in the front of house corridor areas, heat pumps for the pool and power factor correction.

The existing lighting in the fire stair areas was a mixture of 36W single and double T8 fluorescent fixtures driven by electronic and magnetic ballasts. The lights operated 24/7 and had no energy saving controls. The majority of the existing car park lighting was fitted with occupancy sensors.

Products used

The fire stairs were extremely low use areas that accessed each floor and the car park. 24 hour lighting was required, thereby ideally suited to Chamaeleon, which operates on a standby level of light during unoccupied periods. The average standby usage is 7.5W, which increases to 28W when a presence is detected in the area via the microwave sensor.

452 fluorescent tubes were replaced with 313 Chamaeleon lights. A combination of wall and ceiling mount emergency 10 chip Chamaeleon lights were installed in the fire stair areas which required 24 hour lighting and a mixture of standard and emergency chamaeleon lights were installed in the car park.

Post installation lux level readings revealed an average lux level on the stair floor level in the painted basement fire stairs of 123 lux, well above the Standards requirement of 80 lux. Similarly, the average car park lux level was 71.3, almost double the standard 40 lux requirement for the car park parking bay areas.

Electricity savings results

Figure 1: Daily Energy Consumption .Source – Abode Apartments electricity summary report June 2012

The graph (right) illustrates a marked decrease in daily energy consumption for the whole building of around 25% from the Chamaeleon installation commencement date of June 24.

Maintenance savings contribute to the project ROI and are calculated by costing maintenance access, no. of lamps replaced, no. of control components replaced (ballasts, starters, transformers), disposal and emergency battery costs.

The building’s Executive Committee applied for Energy Savings Certificates from the project under the NSW Energy Savings Scheme, as the Chamaeleon has been accredited for use in commercial lighting upgrade projects under the scheme. A total of 1472 certificates were created from the project & sold at $14.25 each, delivering a gross $20,976 rebate to the Executive Commitee.