RE/MAX’s LEED Certified world headquarters in Denver, CO, was selected as “Office Project of the Year." Building on that success, they upgraded the entire building to Cree ZR Series LED troffers featuring Cree SmartCast technology. The Cree LED intelligent lighting solution, available from SMC delivers a reduced heat load and overall energy savings, using daylight harvesting, and occupancy sensing. This upgrade resulted in more than 60% reductions in kilowatt-hours as well as total maintenance savings estimated at $77,410!
RE/MAX takes great pride in the fact that its headquarters building is LEED Certified. Maintaining an exceptional Energy Star score is a top priority. The selection of this solution is helping advance the corporation’s ongoing efficiency goals.
“Our lighting upgrade provides significant energy and demand savings,” says Courtney Ziminski, RE/MAX’s Director of Property and Facilities Management. “Our previous lighting system was relatively efficient, so a large majority of the project savings were delivered by the control system” – 70 percent, in fact.
The ability to dim the emergency egress lights to 10 percent when no one is around has been a big contributor to reduced consumption. When security patrols are making their rounds and trip a sensor, the lights rise to the customary 55 percent setting, then drop back down after they’ve passed.
Total maintenance savings are estimated at $77,410. Ziminski says they’ve seen an estimated 90 percent reduction in labor hours for re-lamping, ballast changing and other maintenance tasks.
Beyond the savings is an overall improvement in the quality of illumination. The light from the luminaires, Ziminski emphasizes, is “crisper and cleaner.” Another well-received advantage has been the ability to customize lighting levels for individuals and groups based on needs and preferences.Brett Thomas, RE/MAX Building Engineer, says that younger employees tend to prefer dimmer lighting. Once a consensus among a group is established on the desired light, the level is adjusted accordingly.
“In some cases,” Thomas says, “we’ve reduced the lighting to as low as 30 percent. It’s great to be able to adjust the levels – it makes for happier employees.”
He notes that this flexibility is most particularly appreciated by the designers in RE/MAX’s marketing department because lower lighting helps keep glow off their computer screens.
Customizing the lights, Thomas adds, is quite easy. “We’ve learned a lot and are able to tweak things as we go. Installing a new device in a group is much easier than you’d expect. It’s just a matter of logging into the network and adding it with the push of a button, and then the system programs that new module to match the group.”
And the configuration tools, Thomas attests, “have been pretty much bulletproof.”
Factor in a rebate of more than $200,000 – which, Ziminski reports, “covered half of our project costs or almost enough to pay our electric bill for three-quarters of the year” – and it’s easy to see why RE/MAX considers this Cree LED lighting solution an across-the-board success.
Get more information and start your process with an SMC LED & Lighting Assessment today!