Convention centre switches to LED bulbs to cut down energy usage

Friday, 03 February 2012 23:14

Chen: LED bulbs can save the centre around RM250,000 a year.

The Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, the country’s leading convention facility, is investing RM2mil to retrofit and improve the lighting efficiency for its five exhibition halls totalling 10,000 sq m.

According to the director of facilities Chen Soo Yoong, this latest investment is by far the largest in the last five years, between RM40,000 and RM50,000 a year has been spent on retrofitting the Centre’s entire lighting system — and will entail replacing about 900 250W metal halide lamps with light-emitting diodes bulbs.

“Albeit, the centre’s electricity consumption varies month to month, depending on the number and type of events, the use of LED bulbs should see our electricity consumption dip to the 63 kWh to 70 kWh range, or 28% of the current energy usage.”

Chen estimates that, based on an estimated 5,000 hours of use per year for all five exhibition halls, the LED bulbs could result in a saving of some 800,000 kWh per year. “This translates into a saving of around RM250,000 a year.

More importantly, we will be reducing the building’s carbon footprint and our overall operating costs.”

Elaborating on the retrofitting job which started after the centre’s opening in 2005, Chen said the high-energy lamps, neon lights and other incandescent bulbs have been gradually replaced with energy-saving bulbs such as LEDs, Compact Fluorescent Lamps, cold cathode and T5 Fluorescent lamps; with all the replaced lamps then disposed off as scheduled waste by Kualili Alam Sdn Bhd.

Kualiti Alam is the owner and operator of Malaysia’s first integrated Scheduled Waste Management Centre.

Chen added that other measures in place to save energy include the use of a specially-designed Variable Speed Drive (VSD) or inverter system to regulate the escalators and air-conditioners.

“The VSD system automatically shuts or slows down the escalators when they are not in use and the air-conditioning when a change in the set temperature is detected.”

Besides these, other measures such as turning down lights to a minimum during build-up and tear-down of event sets and using only battery-operated forklifts and burden vehicles or buggies are also in force.

From The Star