Illuminate your site this winter, on your terms.

Lighting as an industry

Lighting has traditionally been rather expensive to run for long periods and high in emissions, with market pressures to reduce the noise output levels, particularly in rural areas where night time noise pollution is minimal.

If we fast forward to present times, lighting is efficient and features a significantly reduced carbon footprint, whilst boasting an extremely wide and varied product set. With everything from portable lights like Plasterers Lights, to Slam Lights used in hazardous areas, even to Tower Lights that are utilised across almost every industry, there is a solution for every instance. And with breakthroughs in research and development, lighting is no longer totally reliant on burning high quantities of fossil fuels like petrol or diesel for sustained power, instead there has been significant investment into greener lighting solutions.

Greener lighting solutions

As sites continue to explore ways to become more sustainability focussed, lighting is a fantastic area to consider if you want to make a noticeable change. Today the market is progressing down a path of sustainability with an increased number of ‘Eco Lighting’ options being released, options that are designed in a way that focuses on slashing fuel burning rates and emission levels by up to a colossal 72% *(when compared with older metal halide units).

At the top of the pile when it comes to sustainability and demand are the hybrid lighting options that have a diesel or HVO (Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil) base power, but are supported heavily by solar integrations that enable you to generate a large percentage of your power using the sun’s natural rays collected throughout the day, giving you up to 860 hours of light from a single tank of fuel.

Historically there has been a lot of apprehension surrounding the capabilities of solar powered lighting, particularly given the UK’s level of sunlight during the winter months when lighting solutions are thought of the most. With that said, the industry has made tremendous progress, so much in fact that entirely solar powered lights are capable of operating all night at full capacity without any blackout warnings, even on the UK’s cloudiest days.

Lighting in the events space

As a highly necessary component of a site, we see lighting solutions transfer across almost every sector. Despite winter being the most commonly thought of time of year for lighting, we still see a widespread adoption throughout the entire calendar year, particularly in the events sector.

If we take autumn and winter as an example, a high number of festive activities like ice rinks begin to emerge as tourist attractions, but without the necessary lighting capabilities many of these can become highly dangerous very quickly.

Then as we move into the likes of spring and summer, we continue to see lighting rolled out, despite the clocks going forwards and there being significantly more daylight each day. Festival season is a main driver of this utilisation given that their schedules often run deep into the night, and here at Sunbelt Rentals we continue to provide a range of eco lights to festivals like Download Festival in Derbyshire, and many similar in size and scale across the entirety of the UK with the penultimate aim of keeping attendees safe.

Although many green options are used across these events, we see a huge focus on the adoption of greener alternatives, particularly at public sector events, as they look to create a blueprint for how we can move towards a truly carbon neutral future. A clear example of this was the COP26 Climate Change Conference opting to use 55 of our Solar Lights in aid of their aspiration of a more responsible, sustainable event configuration. Similarly, we saw the G7 Summit use solar lighting on two of their sites to not only eliminate the environmental impact from a CO2 emission perspective, but also eliminate operational noise which acts as a key consideration in suburban areas.

Challenges and solutions

It would be unfair to say that there are no hurdles to overcome when it comes to lighting. Like anything there are challenges to address, but with this brings opportunity to shape the future of the industry. More often than not, although everybody intrinsically understands lighting, there are considerations that are not addressed properly in the early stages, that can pose logistical challenges as well as invoking unexpected costs down the line.

Firstly, the costs of traditional non-eco lighting products can be in many cases higher than the costs associated with more eco-friendly alternatives. Although traditional lighting often has a cheaper flat hire rate, over a longer period of time they can become far more expensive given the overall running costs of using large quantities of petrol or diesel fuel. Whereas a hybrid light can run for months using just a single tank of fuel, making significant cost savings and often proving cheaper overall for prolonged use. The refuelling of traditional lights also poses logistical challenges. If your site is large, with multiple lights spread across its grounds, then timing and planning regular refuelling exercises of these lights can be very time consuming not to mention resource heavy.

Also the timing mechanism of lights to spring into action right when needed does require ongoing adjustment considering the shift in varying sunset and sunrise times throughout the year. So, if your site is utilising lights year-round then you do unfortunately need to consider a manual switching of their on/off timing. As an alternative, some of our lighting options do feature telemetry which means you can have our teams control them for you from a remote location, so you can enjoy a seamless transition into the night without needing to lift a finger.

Finally, one of the main issues at the early stage is the awareness of site requirements. Ultimately, Site Managers that seek lighting solutions should be aware that they do not need to become lighting experts overnight, instead they simply need to utilise the resources available to them. When investigating what options are out there, it is advisable that you request a site discovery survey so you can uncover what bespoke setup is right for your exact requirements, what greener solutions are available in order to meet your site’s ESG targets, and how you can drive down hire and overall running costs so you can illuminate your site, on your terms.

So, whether you need one light or one hundred lights, contact our dedicated Sunbelt Rentals lighting team today to discuss your requirements and leave the how to us.