Saving energy at Newtown Silos

Saving energy at Newtown Silos

I am on the Executive Committee of the Owners Corporation for Newtown Silos and over the past year have been working on energy saving measures cut our ever increasing energy bills. We are aiming to reduce our energy costs, cut CO2 emissions & reduce maintenance costs.

Have a read below and make some energy saving suggestions in the comments.

What have we done so far?

  • Push button timer switches on the two garbage rooms so the lights cannot be left on. Each room has 2 x 2 35W fluorescent lights
  • Moved feature wall floodlight (150W) onto a separate timer so it runs only from 6pm until 11pm rather than 6pm to 6am like it used to. This also helped reduce unwanted light shining in some residents bedroom windows
  • Car park lighting is now on a motion sensor so it is only on when required and switches off after 5 minutes
What are we in the process of doing:
  • Halogen down light replacement – The complex has approximately 120 x 20W halogen down lights where the majority are on 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We have just purchased 100 new Redback transformers and  6W StarLux LED down lights. These will replace 100 lights in the common are corridors on all levels of the Silos and Timber Bins buildings than burn 24 x 7. The transformers need to be replaced because the current ones cannot provide such low power. They transformers themselves use up to 6 watts of power, the new redbacks will only use 1W each when running the StarLux LED
  • Halogen up light replacement – In the courtyard there are 14 x 20W halogen up lights that light up the underneath of the Timber Bins and Silos. These will be replaced with 6W StarLux LED globes (no new transformers are needed as they already support low wattage of LEDs). LED’s last up to 50,000 hours compared to the 2,000-4,000 of the halogens.
  • The Timber Bins and Silos corridors on each level have two circuits, a 24hr circuit and a timer switch circuit, each circuit powers every other light around each level. It was found the timer switch is set to always on! The Executive Committee are now deciding on what times we should switch half the lights off. I am proposing we go into half lights mode from 10pm until 6am
Other things we want to do:
  • Halogen down light replacement in lifts. The two lifts in the complex each have 8 x 20W halogen globes that run 24 x 7. We want to switch these to StarLux LED’s as well as setup the lights to switch off when the lift is not in use.
  • Replace fluorescent tubes with LED tubes. This would reduce usage from 35W per tube (plus around 12W for the ballast) down to 18W for a single LED tube. Each fitting needs to be rewired to bypass the ballast so installation needs to be done by an electrician.
  • Install Photoelectric sensors for courtyard lighting so it comes on when it gets dark rather then be controlled by a time switch

2 thoughts on “Saving energy at Newtown Silos

  1. This makes no sense. Owners corporations are not meant to do things which actually benefit all of the owners, you’re meant to be dictating silly by-laws 😉

    Congratulations.

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