saving energy

[mrsbrown]

When we design retail spaces we typically expect that the store will have a 20% occupancy, but that the lighting energy to the store will be designed to operate at 100% during opening hours.  Wouldn't it be good if we could better match the number of people in a supermarket to the energy being provided to keep the store open?

I imagine that going to the supermarket could be a bit like riding in the Ghost Train at Luna Park.  As you enter each section, it could light up. And you would have to wait until there are enough people to justify you starting the journey. 

Although maybe the realistic version of that is using smaller stores for each of the supermarket sections - butcher, dry goods, fruiterer, deli etc.  I wonder what's more energy efficient? The wholly lit supermarket behemoth, or multiple small stores that cover all of the stuff you buy at the supermarket?

Comments

[catsidhe]

The ghost train experience, I suspect, would be rejected because psychology: an area with the lighting lowered looks like it's closed, and people will tend to think they shouldn't enter. Moreover, while your typical large supermarket might have a relatively small occupancy in terms of absolute numbers, for most of the day that occupancy is randomly and evenly spread through the whole space and moving quickly. You wouldn't be able to have any sort of meaningful guiding through the space because shops just don't work like that. There's always going to be people remembering what they need to buy in the pessimal order, taking the longest path back and forth across the length of the supermarket. (Yes, I am one of those people.)

I would suggest the same thing I suggest for my brightly and evenly floodlit open plan office: turn off the goddamned floodlighting! Some bright spark looked at the lighting standards, looked at the lighting level for close detailed work, and decided to save time by making everything at that level. I do not need to see the corridors at the same brightness level as the shelves, let alone the ceiling.

Drop the general lighting lots and lots. Have brighter LED area lighting directed to the shelves, so that you can see what's there, and spots on signs which need attention drawn to them. (Double benefit, those spotlit signs stand out even if they're subtle, you don't need to make the signs SCREAM AT YOU to get your attention over all the other visual noise.) I have been begging for lower general light levels in this building since we moved in, to no avail. Apparently, it wasn't designed to be able to do that, and desk lamps and similar task lighting would ruin the architect's vision or something.

If we could get them to just turn off the damned muzak permanently as well, not just for an hour in the midmorning once every fortnight, that'd be awesome. People don't realise how loud supermarkets are, even while they're actively shouting at you about how they can't hear anything. It doesn't help that they're so determined not to offend anyone by their music choices that the selection is offensively inoffensive. </rant>