This investment coincides with the EU RoHS directive, which bans old-fashioned light sources with high mercury levels. By initiating our replacement process ahead of the ban, we ensured compliance with EU regulations while simultaneously preventing additional mercury pollution in the environment.
We also installed a smart light management system, ensuring that we only light our factory premises when needed. This has resulted in a 2100-hour yearly reduction in light use compared to before the installation of the new system. Why keep the lights on when there are no people present in an area?
When you add them all up, the improvements to the lighting in the Molde factory save nearly as much electricity as 21 detached houses.
One might argue that replacing all our old light sources with LED lighting would negatively impact our heating costs, but we have not experienced this to be the case. Our factory has very tall ceilings, and since heat rises, the heat from the old light sources did not benefit our employees noticeably.
We are not done with our lighting replacement efforts and will continue into 2024. The offices on our Molde premises still need to be upgraded, and we also want to extend the effort to our Volda, Dalen and Porsgrunn locations. In Volda, we have replaced the lights in 2 out of 5 production halls and some of the offices, which comprise about 40% of our Volda premises.
