Since its launch in 2015, Venture Lighting Europe’s advanced VLED Westminster Retrofit Street Light engine has seen a successful period of installations around the country, with 3000 being installed across the London Borough of Merton alone.

Venture’s VLED Westminster light engine uses the latest technology SUPRAX® glass optic to offer a highly efficient and powerful street lighting option with unrivalled energy savings.

The VLED module has been retrofitted to the council’s existing street lighting lanterns as part of a borough-wide upgrade to LED lighting from its previous SON lamps. Installed by Kier Street Lighting Services, this initiative was delivered as a part of an Invest to Save scheme to complement the council’s capital relighting program which is set to replace all lighting with LED across the borough.

Top: Before Venture's LED streetlight retrofit. Below: After installation of Venture’s VLED Westminster Retrofit Street Light Engine. (Venture/LEDinside)

Steve Shew, Interim Infrastructure Manager at Merton Council commented, “As a council, we were looking for the most effective way to significantly reduce future energy and maintenance costs and also reduce our carbon footprint across the borough. Venture’s VLED Westminster Street Light Engine was presented to us by Robert Bennett Associates as a package that could help us achieve this with a projected payback period of less than three years.”

He continued, “By using a retrofit solution we were able to utilise existing columns and lanterns, which saved considerable time and money. We are very pleased with the improvement to the quality of light across the borough since installing the LED retrofits, which will also increase the safety of the borough.”

The 3,000 VLED Westminster modules were directly installed into the council’s existing street lighting columns using the ‘plug and play’ feature, as a quick and cost-effective method without the need for lengthy road closures or lighting downtime.

Once the module is installed it is virtually maintenance free with an impressive LED life of 100,000 hours. This not only eliminates the need for regular, expensive lamp replacements but also offers the council peace of mind. With such longevity, the luminaires can be sure to perform for long periods of time without leaving areas of the borough without light and increasing the risk of crime and accidents for pedestrians and road users.

Besides the ability to significantly extend the life of street lighting schemes, Venture Lighting Europe’s VLED Westminster Street Light Engine offers exceptional benefits to local authorities including the extremely improved energy savings. The VLED module can be built with outputs between 12W and 105W, depending on the requirements of each scheme whilst still producing high lumen packages beyond 11,000 lm and delivering an excellent efficacy of up to 133 lumens per circuit watt.

With such high performance and energy efficient output the VLEDs not only offer improved lighting compared to less efficient HPS lamps, but have considerably lower energy consumption. The module can be programmed with a part night dimming driver with the ability to extend this using full DALI controls to offer customers the opportunity to produce even greater energy savings.

Venture Lighting Europe partnered with its sister company, Auer Lighting in Germany, to produce the VLED Westminster SUPRAX® 8488 borosilicate glass optic, which forms the centrepiece of the street lighting module. This is both temperature and UV resistant which allows the module to offer the stability and long service life demanded in the street lighting environment and eliminates the need for regular maintenance.

Further information on the VLED Westminster Street Lighting Engine is available from Venture Lighting Europe on 01923 692600, by emailing info@venturelighting.co.uk or by visiting the company’s website at www.venturelightingeurope.com