Home Publisher's Point of View Las Vegas Sands Does Not Take LEDs ‘Lightly’

Las Vegas Sands Does Not Take LEDs ‘Lightly’

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Several weeks ago, while in Las Vegas just prior to HD Expo, I had an opportunity to tour around The Palazzo Resort-Hotel-Casino. My guide was Jenny Yu, director, Global Sustainability for Las Vegas Sands Corp. I wrote about part of that tour in an entry on my blog. If you have never been to the complex that includes The Palazzo, The Venetian, and Sands Expo, I highly recommend it. The site features the largest hotel site solar thermal installation in the United States and other very unique green design and operational features.

During a tour of one of the guestrooms at The Palazzo, Jenny told me about the very lengthy process her team went through to select the LED lighting for the guestrooms. I was pretty amazed and would love to know if your property or company has done something similar. I spoke with Jenny again this past week, and she provided more details on their LED lighting selection process.

“About two years ago we realized we had hundreds of thousands of bulbs on the property,” Yu says. Realizing LEDs were becoming more mature and the costs were coming down, an RFP was sent to 15 lighting manufacturers in the United States and Asia that specified the requested maximum wattage, color temperature, color rendering index, lumens/watt, and minimum lumens specifications.

“[Our goal] was to maximize energy efficiency, light quality and customer satisfaction,” Yu said.

Hundreds of Samples Received

Four hundred bulb samples were received. Las Vegas Sands hired an outside consultant who set up a test lab at the property. Each bulb was tested to make sure it performed as promised.

“We filtered out a lot of non-qualified bulb types,” Yu says. “We ranked the bulbs in each category by costs. We did a lifecycle analysis. We looked at labor and disposal costs. We took a look at lifespan. We considered wattage, beam angle, how long a bulb takes to warm up, lighting quality and other factors.” The consultant provided a report on her findings.

Next, several guestrooms were set up as test rooms. One of the rooms included the older lighting and the other two included different types of new LED lighting. Company executives and other internal team members were surveyed on their responses to the different rooms and consumers not employed by the company were brought in and surveyed as well.

Interestingly, participants all chose the suite that included the most energy-efficient lighting as the most favored suite. Yu told me her company was particularly interested in the response of women—those who need optimal lighting for makeup application in the guestroom bathroom or other areas.

A Challenge to Keep Up with LED Technology

Yu says choosing the right LED lighting is almost a process without end given the size of her company and the pace at which LED lighting technology is changing.

What started in The Palazzo guestrooms is moving to other areas of the hotel as well as The Venetian where Yu says only a couple of light bulbs in each guestroom are left to be replaced.

Yu adds that LEDs don’t always work well in highly designed spaces. In a meeting space area with chandeliers, she says they tried LEDs but when dimmed they turned from a warm glow to green.

To help find the LED bulbs they need, the Las Vegas Sands team has even traveled to GE Lighting headquarters in Ohio to meet with GE’s engineers from China. Yu says that because of her company’s size and bulb demand, GE is willing to develop the LED bulbs that meet her company’s needs.

Sifting Through the LED Chaos

Almost daily I receive information on new LED lighting products. There have got to be thousands of companies now selling LEDs. I sympathize with anyone who has to sift through the confusing information surrounding the technology. Not everyone has the time or the means to set up a lab to test hundreds of products. Where do you go for recommendations on which LED lighting products truly deliver what their makers say they deliver? I would love to know so I can share that information with our readers.

What do you think? Is there a need in our industry for an organization that understands the lighting needs of hoteliers and designers—an unbiased organization that also has the capability to keep up with changes in lighting technology and do the testing and reporting that is required for all of the lighting qualities that are of interest? Perhaps it could be an organization that would be supported industry-wide? It seems to me it would save a lot of people a lot of time and money to have one centralized source for LED lighting information. Your thoughts?

As always, I can be reached at editor@greenlodgingnews.com, or by phone at (216) 848-1406.

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