The Navy is looking at aggressively implementing a solid state lighting program across the fleet, replacing its legacy fluorescent lighting in an effort to bring manpower and maintenance benefits as well as energy savings.
Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy Capt. James Goudreau told Defense Daily Thursday the service has been happy with a number of different fixtures that have been out in the fleet for testing and validation. Though the financial savings produced from more advanced lighting is not as large as the Navy’s efforts to develop more energy-efficient fuel, Goudreau said manpower savings is the difference.
“It’s not necessarily a tremendously large percentage of energy savings, but the business case becomes very, very competitive and very, very convincing when you take into account the manpower that you save,” Goudreau said following an Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) event on Capitol Hill.
Goudreau said Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) started pilot programs a few years ago to test commercially-available technology and see how they worked on ships. Legacy T8W5 florescent lighting not only requires lots of manpower to manage, but also takes up valuable space on ships and subs. Lights must be replaced regularly and be disposed of properly due to mercury levels found in bulbs, so they are stored on the ship until they can be properly disposed. Florescent lighting also makes noise that can disrupt the sleep of sailors.
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) said in 2011 it created the Solid State Lighting (SSL) initiative, which is being installed aboard several ships and submarines. ONR said not only are next-generation LED fixtures a quality of life improvement as they reduce background noise during operation, but compared with fluorescent lights, LED fixtures last longer. LED fixtures match form, fit and function replacements and provide resistance to vibration and shock.
Goudreau said NAVSEA is looking to widen the availability for different commercial products and to lower prices of possible replacement lighting.
Energy Focus of Ohio is one company that has developed a possible solution for new lighting. The company said its product, called the IntelliTube LED fixture, doesn’t contains glass nor hazardous materials, requires no additional removal nor storage costs and uses 50 percent less power. Energy Focus in April said it would retrofit the Navy’s aircraft carrier fleet, which at 8,000 or more linear fluorescent lamps per carrier, represents the largest users of shipboard lighting in the service.
Energy Focus was awarded $4.1 million by the Navy in the first quarter of 2014, the bulk of funding for its IntelliTube LED fixture. In addition to the aircraft carrier, Goudreau said replacement lighting has also been installed on destroyers and amphibious ships. Goudreau said the Navy would like to see replacement lights also installed on its Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) due to the weight component.
“Certainly when you get into some of the smaller ships, where you want to manage the weight component and you have reduced manning on board,” Goudreau said. “It becomes a critical enabling factor.”