Since installing the ROAM™ outdoor lighting monitoring and control system from Acuity Brands Inc., the Plymouth School District in Plymouth, Mass. has significantly reduced maintenance time and energy costs. The ROAM system allows maintenance staff to easily customize outdoor lighting needs for eight individual elementary, middle and high school campuses.

The ROAM system helps the District proactively identify potential outages and lighting issues before or immediately after they occur. By knowing that the lights are operating properly at the glance of the system-monitoring portal, the District can now spend less time and money on lighting maintenance while minimizing safety concerns attributed to outages and malfunctioning systems for students, staff and the community. The visibility of the system enables users to quickly and efficiently identify issues when they occur across campuses, resulting in a reduction of total life cycle cost.

Additionally, the ROAM system’s programming flexibility enables each school to have its outdoor lights on at specified, programmed times. The previous lighting controls system included mechanical time clocks that required constant setting adjustments at individual sites across multiple campuses. Now, the District can effortlessly alter light settings to accommodate events on each campus, such as after-school activities, school holidays and inclement weather, from one secure web portal.

“Complaints were coming in from the community that our lights were on during the day at various campuses. This was because the time clocks were malfunctioning,” said Chris Hastings, Plymouth Public Schools Energy Conservation Coordinator. “Since installing ROAM, all community member complaints about lighting problems and outages stopped – especially complaints about lights that were on the during the day.”

In addition to maintenance concerns, the District was concerned with energy costs associated with parking lot lighting operating nearly 24 hours a day during the winter. Now, the ROAM system helps reduce energy use by programming the lighting to turn off after the custodial staff leaves at night until the early morning when it is still dark and teachers begin to arrive. Implementing lighting controls also helps extend the life of the lighting system, by turning them off when lighting is not needed.

For enhanced safety and energy savings, users can define exactly which fixtures should be on at what times for operation through a simple scheduling tool.