City of Greenville Public Works Department

Challenge: The City of Greenville Public Works campus in Greenville, South Carolina, is central to the growing city’s environmental and infrastructure management, which includes over 224 miles of streets and 125 miles of sidewalks. This new facility centralizes operations while meeting the safety, security, and cost considerations related to overall operations.

The campus features an emergency operations center, training, and fleet management facilities, an automated vehicle wash station, fueling station, and a full-size independent NAPA store, all of which require equipment that is durable and reliable no matter the conditions.

Previously, the Public Works Department and its nearly 200 employees were spread across the city in outdated facilities that were inefficient, and, sometimes, nonoperational due to frequent flooding. In an effort to centralize Public Works, City officials relocated all the disparate operations and built a brand-new campus that would meet their budgetary and sustainability requirements.  

Lighting and lighting control decisions were integral in the safety, security and efficiency goals of the campus environment. In order to meet these needs, the Public Works facility required an affordable lighting solution that would perform as advertised, stand the test of time and provide a significant return on the investment with energy savings.

Based on these requirements, the team needed to ensure that the best lighting fixtures and controls were chosen for the campus while keeping costs low.

Solution: In order to fully equip the nearly 100,000-square-foot facility with the proper light fixtures and controls, the City of Greenville, DP3 Architects, Carolina Architectural Lighting (“CAL+D”) and Harper Corporation developed a solution that included a wide variety of lighting and controls products from several Current Lighting brands for both interior and exterior spaces. 

Lighting for Interior Administration and Training Buildings

The team selected a 6" LiteFrame LED downlight from Prescolite. With glare-free optical control and long life, this downlight is ideal for price-conscious buyers who don’t want to sacrifice quality. Perfect for the City of Greenville’s budget, LiteFrame provides a sleek and minimalistic look for the space.

The team also selected the LCAT from Columbia Lighting, a DLC premium listed LED troffer with an architectural appearance that provides both design and value. The LCAT is used in offices, conference rooms, break rooms, and the training room. The training room is used to lead vital instruction on safety and skills for employees and other local organizations, such as the campus neighbor Duke Energy.

In other spaces within the building, including the campus exercise facility, the LJTfrom Columbia Lighting offers energy-efficient illumination. The LED troffer is available in 3,200 to 8,775 lumens in three sizes (1×4, 2×2 and 2×4).

In the work bay, Columbia Lighting’s LLHV VersaBay® LED powerfully illuminates the workspace to ensure all workers have the best lighting options to properly perform their jobs and navigate the busy workspace. The high bay offers remarkable energy savings, leading to a fast ROI that satisfies the City’s budgetary and energy considerations.

The NEMA 4X certified Dual-Lite Dynamo and the wet location listed Compass CEW exit light are utilized in the work bay as both are well-suited for the conditions in this environment. The Dynamo is a highly versatile unit that provides a minimum of 90 minutes of illumination in the case of a power outage. The CEW has an LED life-cycle of more than ten years.  

Exterior Lighting

Outside, the team kept the safety and security of the campus in mind, as it is critical to keep the space well-illuminated when visibility is low.   

Due to the high-frequency activity in the parking lot, employees must follow special safety protocols, so they remain visible at all times.

The Public Works parking lot features Viper LED luminaires by Beacon Products, which provides reliable high-performance illumination throughout the lot to ensure employee safety. While the DLC-qualified Viper was chosen for its superior illumination, the luminaire’s energy benefits were an important consideration as well.

Outside the work bay, LNC2 Litepak fixtures from Current Outdoor Lighting live up to their design promise by brightly illuminating the perimeter of the building for safety, security and identity purposes. Despite the high output, the LNC2 achieves up to 85 percent energy savings over traditional lighting sources making it an easy choice for facility managers.

Around the buildings’ entryways and walkways, the stepped body baffles of the Gem® Performance Bollards from KIM Lighting add a unique accent. Not only do the bollards add to the overall design aesthetic of the facility, but they are also equipped with an emergency battery back-up pack that can be used in case of power outages and harsh weather conditions.

In front of the facility, Lightvault® 8 in-grade luminaires from KIM Lighting are used to proudly highlight the United States, South Carolina, and City of Greenville flags flying ahead of the entryway. The in-grade luminaires can be field-aimed, which allows for wireless adjustments and dimming.

Lighting Controls

Lighting controls were incorporated into the design as part of the overall lighting cost and management plan for the facility. Lighting controls from Current Control Solutions featured at this facility include the CX Lighting Control Panels, SiteSync™, and NX Distributed Intelligence™.

SiteSync delivers flexible control strategies for reducing power consumption and minimizing maintenance costs while delivering the right light levels with a simple and affordable wireless solution. Between 8 PM and 6 AM when staff is limited, the lights are set to dim to 20 percent of the normal output and return to full output when motion is detected by sensors. The Public Works team wanted to increase energy savings by using this scheduling technology to cut costs and conserve energy yet ensure employee and visitor safety. Occasionally, the team uses manual overrides for special events outside the facility, which they can easily adjust using SiteSync’s simple controls.

They also found that SiteSync facilitates maintenance operations, enabling the facility manager to wirelessly test and troubleshoot the light fixtures from the parking lot using the distributed intelligence functions. This helps facility managers save time by avoiding cumbersome trips back and forth between the building and parking lot to check fixtures.  

The CX Commercial Lighting Control Panels offer flexible programming options for the facility with manual and scheduled switching options up to 48 lighting loads. Dimming options are important for campus security as they allow managers to keep key areas fully illuminated at night while avoiding wasted energy on less vulnerable areas of the facility.

Inside the buildings, scheduled lighting is set to match employees’ work hours while Current Control Solutions’ OMNI passive infrared sensor adjusts lighting levels based on occupancy. OMNI sensors utilize Smart IntelliDAPT® Technology to analyze public spaces in the facility and make digital adjustments to both sensitivity and timing settings for optimal performance, energy savings, and maintenance-free, install-and-forget operation.

NX Specialty switches give employees intuitive manual controls options that align with their lighting needs throughout the interior spaces. While the controls are currently used primarily for basic On and Off controls, the Public Works team is planning for the next phase of the lighting solution to utilize the truly intelligent elements of the NX Distributed Intelligence system by leveraging customizable controls through its self-configure functions.

Benefit: The Public Works campus ultimately came in under budget, due in part to the price-conscious and value-driven lighting and lighting control options that were chosen for the design. Mike Murphy, director of Public Works, said it is always the City of Greenville’s goal to partner with local companies like Current Lighting to provide the most efficient, creative and cost-effective solutions while keeping project aesthetics top of mind.

The employees at the safety-focused facility can rest easy knowing that throughout the day and night, lighting options provide workers with safe illumination and reliable emergency options.

Dave Derrick, assistant director of Public Works, anecdotally shared that the lighting controls are especially helpful for maintaining a secure facility, adding that the lighting can be flashed to signal workers in the case of an emergency and he will receive alerts if a fixture on the property has malfunctioned. 

While the full lighting controls potential is still being actualized at the site, safety training officer Albert Beedie indicated that lighting plays an important role in the overall security and safety plans that the City has in place.

In the long term, the project can expect to achieve 20 percent less energy consumption than the old facilities combined thanks in part to the LED lightings and controls. These continued cost savings help Public Works reserve funds for projects integral to the maintenance of the growing city’s infrastructure.