Energy-efficient high mast lighting for UK City of Culture

CU Phosco work with Balfour Beatty to replace Coventry’s high mast lighting throughout the cities inner and outer ring roads, saving 30 percent energy with a payback period of less than four years.

In 2017, Coventry was named the UK City of Culture 2021 by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which provided access to funding to improve its infrastructure and arts facilities. The city will host a series of events celebrating local culture until 2025.

Since then, Coventry City Council has been working to regenerate the city’s public realm, with lighting playing a crucial role in the transformation. In 2010, Balfour Beatty Living Places was awarded a 25-year street lighting PFI partnership by Coventry City Council to manage and maintain the city’s street lighting assets, ensuring they are efficient, reliable, and safe.

In the first five years of the partnership, Balfour Beatty replaced and upgraded all of the streetlights across the city, reducing energy usage by 50%, minimising light pollution, improving response times, and reducing the overall number of streetlights by 10 percent. This has helped to save 3,000 tonnes of carbon emissions each year.

One of the partnerships workstreams was the replacement of high-mast lighting, for which they turned to CU Phosco. They replaced the 400W high energy lanterns on high masts throughout the city’s inner and outer ring roads with new energy-efficient LED luminaires.

CU Phosco installed a total of 443 P855 luminaires on 78 high masts across a variety of roads in the city.

The high mast LED luminaire features a 360° rotating STAR-optic®, providing the team with unlimited lighting design and orientation freedom while allowing them to optimise energy efficiency (160 lm/W) for even the most challenging schemes. This was ideal for Coventry’s busiest locations.

Due to the location of the sites, the project required meticulous planning to minimise public and emergency service disruption.

The CU Phosco team completed the lighting design. Once approved, the installation and mast maintenance took place during the night over a four-week period, keeping road closures to a minimum and outside peak hours.

Even after installation, the luminaires continue to offer minimal disruption to residents. P855’s G6 glare rating ensures it is dark sky friendly with no upward light, reducing light pollution in the local area.

The new installation and maintenance works restored the integrity of Coventry’s high mast lighting infrastructure, delivering improved lighting quality and road safety for the residents of the UK’s City of Culture 2021.

Additionally, the scheme has delivered 30% energy savings for the council with a payback period of less than four years.

Steve Hall, Midlands Contract Manager | Balfour Beatty Living Places, comments, “CU Phosco carried out the works exceedingly well and worked well with our team at Balfour Beatty Living Places. I found working with them a pleasure. The benefits of this scheme are now being truly realised, with the new improved and more reliable lighting also minimising recent increases in energy costs for the council.”