Monday, March 5, 2012

National Graduate School Excels With RAB LED Lighting


The National Graduate School of Quality Management (“NGS”) in Falmouth, Massachusetts recently upgraded the quality of its outdoor lighting using highly-efficient LED fixtures from RAB Lighting. A distinguished leader offering advanced degrees in such quality-related curriculums as Systems Management and Six Sigma practices, the school prides itself on its provision of tools which drive operational excellence, lasting cost savings, and “success you can measure.”

With the core concept of “return on investment” being of such prime focus within NGS’ academic syllabus, the school’s management decided to lead by example and upgrade the outdated, inefficient outdoor lighting on its campus, particularly outside of the 20,000 square-foot estate it acquired and converted into a Research Center in 2009. Though the addition of the Center provided students with ample new research, conference, and study facilities, the structure and surrounding premises contained outmoded lighting technology dating back to the building’s original construction in the 1950’s.

“Our curriculum is focused on helping students drive measurable process improvements, so we thought it was time to “practice what we teach” and use our own facility to model positive energy conservation practices for our students, neighbors, and the larger community,” said Dr. Robert Gee, President and Founder
the National Graduate School.

According to Gee, the new lighting had to meet several key criteria:
• reduce energy consumption and costs for the school
• be aesthetically pleasing in light of the Research Center’s location in a quiet residential neighborhood in nearby Woods Hole, MA
• be durable enough to stand up to the extreme weather conditions associated with the school’s New England locale
• create no light dispersion in the night sky which could disturb neighbors or impact the environment surrounding the school’s property, which overlooks Oyster Pond and the peaceful seascape of Martha’s Vineyard

NGS found its solution in powerful and highly-efficient 10 Watt LED fixtures from RAB Lighting. The 150 LED area lights, bollards, and wallpacks that were selected firmly address the facility’s safety and security lighting concerns in addition to attractively highlighting the property’s flagpole and landscaping. The RAB LED fixtures use 10 Watt LED light engines in a fully shielded, full cutoff design, which eliminates light pollution and ensures that light output is efficiently focused downward on walkways. The fixtures’ durable epoxy powder coat aluminum exterior with tempered glass and double gasketing are able to withstand both New England weather as well as the extreme conditions associated with outdoor seaside applications. And, as confirmed through LM-79 and LM-80 testing by independent laboratories, RAB LED light engines provide a 50,000-hour lifespan to help ensure long-lasting operation and significantly reduce maintenance costs for the school.

RAB Lighting’s Ross Barna, CEO of the Northvale, New Jersey-based lighting company, concurs that RAB’s WPLED10, WPLED10S, BLED10, and ALED10 fixtures were indeed ideal solutions for NGS in terms of their optical design, outstanding energy efficiency, long life, and high lumen output. “Operating for an estimated 10 hours per night, RAB LED fixtures will provide many years of maintenance-free operation for the school. In addition, all of the fixtures are full cutoff, fully shielded designs which are Dark-Sky certified, assuring the school that light is only delivered where it’s needed and won’t contribute light pollution to the surrounding environment,” Barna says. “And from an economic perspective,” he adds, “the LEDs will significantly reduce energy consumption and costs, allowing NGS to channel precious funds into activities that can help the school continue to grow and best serve its students and faculty.”

Confirms NGS’s Gee, “the use of RAB LED fixtures reduced our lighting energy consumption and costs by 75% while delivering better quality lighting.” As part of his dedication to a green facility, which has involved the upgrade of all HVAC systems, carpets, and cleaning supplies with more environmentally-friendly products and systems, Gee says he will continue to upgrade other lighting throughout the campus using RAB LED fixtures.

Overall, concludes Gee, “the National Graduate School of Quality Management is committed to supporting the environment by reducing energy consumption and using its own facilities as a model of efficiency for our students. Our new RAB LEDs have delivered significant energy and maintenance savings, have allowed us to be sensitive to our neighborhood and ecological surroundings, and have resulted in so much positive feedback from students, faculty, and townspeople that they’ve driven many unexpected benefits and have truly exceeded our expectations.”

Thanks to their proactive lighting upgrade involving RAB LEDs, NGS can truly practice what it teaches and stand as an environmental leader and model of green behavior within both its academic circles and local community.

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