UK-based CU Phosco Lighting meets all outdoor lighting needs, from design and manufacture to follow-up maintenance.
Market leader CU Phosco® Lighting is the largest designer and manufacturer of premier outdoor lighting solutions in the UK. Its extensive range of exterior lighting luminaries, floodlights, lighting columns and masts, designed and manufactured at factories in Gloucestershire and Yorkshire, can be seen on motorways, at airports, in shopping centres, housing estates and sports stadiums around the world.
From its head office in Hertfordshire, CU Phosco offers its customers a comprehensive package, from the initial consultation to the design and final colour presentation of a CAD lighting scheme, through manufacture of luminaires and floodlights to delivery, installation and follow-up maintenance. This all adds up to a level of support which is unparalleled in the outdoor lighting industry.
Here, CU Phosco outlines some of its key successes as a supplier of outdoor lighting solutions to roadsides and bridges in the UK.
Dartford crossing
In 2015, Connect Plus Services identified the need to upgrade the street lighting of the Dartford Crossing, which was originally installed in the early 1990s. Connect Plus commissioned Mott McDonald Southampton to re-light the crossing using existing positions of the 192 lighting units.
The original CU Phosco columns mounted on the bridge parapet were replaced and upgraded, along with 6km of new cabling and new cable management systems, which in the long term made the scheme cost efficient compared to replacing the different assets at different times.
Mott McDonald had to reuse the original column spacings and acknowledged that the Phosco P851 LED was the most suitable luminaire available thanks to its low glare reflector system – ideal for both bridge users and the local environment. The 95W LEDs replaced 150W HID products, offering huge energy savings in addition to the control of a central management system, CELTek, supplied by Charles Endirect Ltd.
CU Phosco also assisted in the redesign of the lighting columns, using special flange-based tapered tubular columns to increase their lifetime and to fit existing plinth bases on the outer edge of the bridge parapets. As part of the lighting design, the height of the lighting columns was also reduced to ten metres.
The upgrade was completed in late 2016 with outstanding results. Replacing both the luminaires and lighting columns has provided Connect Plus with a reduced maintenance schedule and lighting costs for several years to come.
The luminaires are expected to last at least 24 years and the columns 40 years. Thanks to their hardwearing polysiloxane paint finish, the columns will not need to be repainted for at least 25 years: a significant advantage given that repainting bridge columns is both dangerous and expensive. The luminaires have been similarly designed to require little maintenance over the course of their life expectancy, again delivering important cost savings. All of this comes on top of the substantial energy savings made by replacing the original luminaries with LED lighting.
Connect Plus said: “CU Phosco’s combined LED luminaire and lighting column solution provided Connect Plus Services with a ‘one supplier’ solution, which enabled a smooth ordering and delivery experience. CU Phosco’s many years of lighting design and experience helped to deliver a solution, combined with other innovations utilised on this scheme, with an installation that is safer to maintain, easier to maintain and more energy efficient.”
Mersey Gateway
CU Phosco was also involved in the final 18 months of construction of the Mersey Gateway, a 2.2km bridge spanning the River Mersey and Manchester Ship Canal between Runcorn and Widnes. CU Phosco suppled more than 900 state-of-the-art outdoor lighting units to the project, including 865 P850 LED luminaires and 60 FL800R LED floodlighting systems fitted with WB855 gearboxes.
The P850 was selected as the luminaire of choice early on in the project thanks to its longevity and lower maintenance, which put it far ahead of the cosmopolis originally considered by contractor Merseylink Consortium. Following technological advancements at CU Phosco, the company suggested adding its new FL800R systems to the design. Installing these in the toll booth areas gave the best uniformity across the lanes and provided extra light at the vehicle number plate recognition camera areas. WB855 gearboxes were added for a smoother-looking aesthetic on side entry columns.
The Mersey Gateway opened in October 2017 and today sees 70,00 vehicles crossing every day.
M6 Toll
Midland Expressway Ltd. required an upgrade of the existing road lighting at each toll plaza situated on the M6 Toll motorway. The brief was to improve the outdoor lighting solutions at the six toll booth sections with LED lighting, providing improved vision of the toll booth lane, booth access and signage. Also key to the project vision was to utilising LED technology to reduce maintenance at the plaza intersections and minimise disruption to road users.
CU Phosco provided its groundbreaking P860 highway lantern for the road lighting in addition to a specialist floodlighting uplighter for the gantry sign lighting. The existing HID road scheme used four 250W Son floodlights mounted at varied heights/positions from outreach brackets on 15m columns. The new design replaced those floodlights with a single post top-mounted P860 highway lantern.
The gantry lighting was originally provided via 400W Son HID floodlights up lighting the toll booth signs across the road infrastructure at varied positions. The client wanted to create a bespoke product by replacing these with an LED light source from the CU Phosco Lighting range.
The performance of the high-powered P860 highway lantern at 479W provided excellent uniformity and vision across the extensive lanes at the toll booths. Not only did this reduce the weight and column stresses on the existing asset structure, it also minimised significant visual clutter. From its column factory, CU Phosco provided a replacement steel post top adapter for the existing columns to allow the lantern to be mounted onto the roadside. Swapping HID for LED outdoor lighting solutions reduced energy on the roadway by 60 per cent.
The new design for the gantry lighting replaced each existing floodlight position with a specially designed FL800R LED floodlight at 301W. The LED modules were redesigned in a bespoke canopy to align the modules to uplight the signs from the toll booth roof, housing the driver compartment on the base of the canopy. The effect was reduced energy on the gantries by 33 per cent. Moreover, the change to an LED white light source dramatically improved the clarity of the blue motorway signs due to the compatibility of these colour sources within the light spectrum.
Lee Sanderson
Export Manager
CU Phosco Lighting
+44 (0)1920 860615
