The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has published the final report from a demonstration conducted at a Walmart Supercenter in Leavenworth, Kansas, to evaluate the use of solid-state lighting (SSL) technology in a commercial parking lot lighting application. This GATEWAY demonstration report provides an overview of project results including lighting performance, economic performance, and potential energy savings.

In this project, LED luminaires were installed in a parking lot covering more than a half-million square feet. Since the demonstration was at a newly constructed store, no baseline system existed, so comparisons were made to hypothetical designs using 1000W pulse-start metal halide (PMH) lamps and 400W PMH lamps.

Key findings include:

Compared to the 1000W PMH system, the LED system would achieve energy savings of 63 percent with a 68 percent reduction in the minimum illuminance values. In comparison to the 400W PMH system, the LED system would achieve 44 percent energy savings while providing virtually the same minimum illuminance values.

The LED system had 6.1- and 7.5-year paybacks, respectively, compared to the 1000W and 400W PMH systems at Leavenworth's relatively low electricity rate of $0.056/kWh. These paybacks were reduced to four and five years, respectively, when using the national electricity rate of $0.1022/kWh.

This installation represents the first use of the LED Parking Lot Performance Specification, developed by DOE's Commercial Building Energy Alliances, and demonstrates that the specification works in practice.

For more details, view the full report. This lighting demonstration is one of many DOE GATEWAY demonstrations that showcase high-performance LED products for general illumination.