Queuing up for lighting solution

Traditionally, it is lit using 75W SON lamps spaced about 20 metres apart. However, these give off pools of light, meaning that engineers are faced with the daunting prospect of having to walk along the jetty, moving between alternate well-illuminated areas to those in near darkness, involving continual adjustments to their night vision.

To overcome this pooling of light, Ideas With Energy came up with a solution involving the deployment of 20W LEDs fitted with a special lens to give a lateral spread of light.

“The fittings on the SON lamps suffered costly corrosion and had to be replaced quite regularly. They are over water, so only suitably trained crew could do this work. It was therefore a sub-optimal solution, although state-of-the-art in its day,” says Derek McGlashan, Forth Ports’ environment and energy manager.

Ideas With Energy supplied Leith with 10 pre-production adapted LED units, which were installed in March 2013 on a trial basis to see if they could cope in the harsh environment, being buffeted by winds, sea salt, sand and spray.

“If this trial – involving 10 units over 100m of of jetty – is a success, this solution could cope with anything, anywhere. To date, the engineers have been delighted, because the light output is fantastic,” he says, adding that it took just 50 minutes to install the 10 plug-and-play fitments. “We plan to keep them there for year and see how they do, although the engineers already want to do the rest of the jetty.”

Not only that, but staff from Forth Ports’ Grangemouth facility also want to apply a similar solution to their jetty, while colleagues in Tilbury are eagerly looking at the performance.

“You can’t beat that for an endorsement: when staff are queuing up to see something going into production!”