Shining a light on council savings

BELFIELD TECHNOLOGIES:CASH-STRAPPED local councils in the United Kingdom are switching off street lighting to save money and meet CO2 reduction targets. But Irish start-up company Belfield Technologies may have the answer. It has developed a lighting control system that can cut up to 40 per cent of the cost of running the high-intensity, discharge lamps usually used to light streets, sports grounds, motorways and retail outlets.

HID LightSaver is the brainchild of UCD academics Dr Kevin McDonnell and Dr Ger Devlin, whose areas of special interest are biosystems engineering and green-energy solutions. The company is being supported by Nova, UCD’s innovation and technology transfer centre.

HID LightSaver is the first of a number of energy- management products the company plans to unveil over the next five years.

“What makes HID LightSaver unique is how we have combined the transformer and programme logic controller, and this is currently patent-pending technology,” says Dr Devlin. “There are voltage reduction systems on the market but our technology is unique in that higher percentage savings can be achieved by manipulating the voltage to achieve constant optimum output wattage for each lamp without having to retrofit each individual lamp.”

Devlin and McDonnell have been working on the product for the best part of three years. It has already been piloted at UCD and in the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown council area.

“There is a return on investment within 12 to 24 months with savings of between 20 per cent and 40 per cent depending on the application, while the system also brings a reduction in carbon footprint,” Devlin says. “We estimate that the saving in Ireland on street lighting alone would be around €14 million a year. The market for green-energy solutions worldwide is significant. It is estimated to be worth around €3.2 trillion by 2020.”

Sales of HID LightSaver are just beginning. The company is looking for investment of about €400,000 to fund the next phase of its development. The company has brought in outside expertise to bolster its management team. Their big challenge will be successfully getting the product to market.