LED Savings Stack Up For Aluminum Smelter

This story I found on the Sustainable Planet website tells about what I think is one of the best uses of LED lighting I have seen yet. After 42 years in service, the incandescent beacon lights on the chimney stack at Century Aluminum's Hawesville, Kentucky primary smelter were in need of an upgrade. The eight 1,400 watt lights, four on top and four halfway up, and eight 116 watt lights, a quarter way up and three quarters way up, were not only costing the company around $6,000 a year in electricity, maintenance costs were adding another $4,000 a year. Century found a solution to the high costs of operating and maintaining these lights in a pair of LED obstruction lights from Dialight of Suffolk, England. The Dialight L-864 LED beacons use only 20 watts of electricity and will replace the top and middle lights. The remaining lights will be replaced by Dialights L-810 Red RTO steady-burning LED's that use only 6.5 watts. The lights are FAA compliant and have a greater then 10 year life expectancy so not only will Century Aluminum save over 90% on electrical costs, they will save around $40,000 on maintenance over the lights lifetime. I think this is a great example of the potential cost savings of LED lights. Not only do you save lots of money on electricity, your maintenance costs are almost non existant for the life of the lights. Home owners, waterfront resturants and marinas can save on electricty and maintenance costs by installing underwater LED dock lights.

http://www.sustainableplant.com/2011/04/century-aluminum-cuts-maintenance-and-energy-costs-with-led-obstruction-lights/