In an effort to demonstrate how to promote safety while reducing power demand by lighting the parking lot area more uniformly, the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has published a new guide for parking lot lighting. The guide includes four steps that lighting designers and specifiers can follow to compare performance of alternatives to a base case parking lot lighting design.
“By using perceived safety as a performance criterion, alternate lighting designs can be evaluated to minimize power demand while balancing other design criteria,” said John Bullough, Director of Transportation and Safety Lighting Programs. “Taking advantage of uniformity has implications not only for energy savings but also for minimizing light pollution.”
The guide also provides a link to a calculation tool specifiers can use to estimate occupants’ ratings of perceived safety.
The guide is available at https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/energy/pdf/ParkingLotLightingGuide.pdf