As part of a project to refurbish the lighting at Cardiff Castle, Megaman has supplied a variety of its energy efficient lamps to maintain the brightness required within the Castle interiors, whilst retaining the aesthetics of the building and providing energy savings.
During 2,000 years of history, Cardiff Castle has been a Roman Garrison, a Norman stronghold and in Victorian times was transformed into a gothic fairytale fantasy. The Castle’s ongoing conservation project is valued at about £8m and has been supported by a £5.7m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, whilst additional financial support has been received from CADW and Visit Wales.
Castle staff, together with the Cardiff Council’s energy management team, came up with a plan to replace all the light bulbs with energy saving compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and LEDs.
Of the 415 light bulbs in the house alone, 117 are contained within the chandeliers in the Banqueting Hall, making the change over to energy efficient lamps quite a daunting task. Megaman supplied a combination of 5W LED Clear Candle lamps, 8W GU10 LEDs, 15W AR111 LED’s, GU10s and 18W CFL GLS lamps for use throughout the project.
The LED lamps are guaranteed to last at least three years, offer the added benefits of low heat emission, and negligible ultraviolet and infrared output, which can be harmful to the castle’s delicate interiors. The LED lamps run at 5W each, rather than the 25W filament lamps, and are expected to last around 50 times longer than traditional bulbs.
Annual energy costs have been reduced, with a calculated energy saving of 45.6 tonnes of CO2 and this is in addition to the cost reductions in maintenance and down-time. The success of the project has led Cardiff Council to consider repeating the exercise with more historic buildings
