The next time you are strolling across campus at night, take a look at the lights that you are walking under. It turns out over the past few years, Facilities Management (FM) has been methodically changing the old lights on buildings and streetlights to LED lights.
Beth Anne Carman, the director of FM, said they are making this change because, “Number one, it provides better light and number two, it is more energy efficient.”
When FM started changing lights in the campus’s interior a few years ago, FM converted a number of parking lots lights’ over to the better and brighter LEDs.
Capital is making this change in an effort to be more cost effective and environmentally friendly. As Carman said, these new LED lights are more beneficial to the university than the old ones because, “It helps the university’s electric bill, and LED is more sustainable.”
Since completing the lighting transition of the parking lots, FM has also replaced the lighting fixtures on some of the older buildings when they were not able to find replacement parts for the existing lights.
Changing the lights in the parking lots and on the buildings was just part of this change, since FM have been able to change many of the lights here on campus. But FM not completely finished, with the streetlights in the interior of campus being the only ones left that FM has yet to switch over.
These lights in particular are a bit of a struggle for FM to replace because they have to be retroactively filled, which is more expensive, and according to Carman they have to try to, “maintain a pleasant visual,” by avoiding mixing the different kinds of lights within a small area.
Finishing this process, especially within the campus itself, will still take a few years to finish, due to the way that the program is phased. This means that FM will have to go back each year and try to find funding for the new LED lights, but eventually campus will have a better, brighter campus.
