Unity Theatre Cuts Energy Bills with Intelligent Emergency Lighting System
Liverpool’s Unity Theatre, a renowned champion of new writing and community engagement, has slashed its energy costs with a cutting-edge emergency lighting system. The move highlights a growing trend of facilities managers seeking innovative solutions to reduce running expenses.
The Challenge:
Maintaining an aging emergency lighting system was a financial strain for the historic theatre. Manual checks and lamp replacements were time-consuming and expensive. Additionally, the old system lacked energy efficiency, further burdening the theatre’s budget.
The Solution:
Unity Theatre partnered with Hochiki Europe to install the FIREscape Nepto, an intelligent emergency lighting system. This innovative system boasts several key features that benefit facilities teams looking to improve their life safety systems and bring costs down:
- Intelligent and Self-Sufficient: FIREscape Nepto eliminates the need for manual checks. The system conducts self-tests, stores reports, and alerts staff to maintenance requirements.
- Energy Efficient: The system utilises a low-voltage design, leading to significant energy cost savings. The devices are also produced from fully recyclable materials and incorporate energy-saving LED technology that helps to reduce CO2e emissions, FIREscape Nepto’s impact on the environment remains at an absolute minimum. Helping building managers to meet green targets.
- Adjustable Light Levels: FIREscape Nepto is a feature rich system with adjustable lighting levels (perfect for theatres), an intuitive graphics package, bi-coloured status LEDs, day and night modes and the ability to program units as maintained or non-maintained.
- Easy install and low-cost maintenance: The wide variety of system features and product accessories, not only helps to make installation simple, but also enables the installer to provide a flexible and cost-effective solution tailored to the requirements of the building and building owner.
The Results:
The installation process at Unity Theatre was smooth and efficient, taking only four days to complete. The new system not only ensures safety but also offers significant benefits. The theatre now enjoys reduced maintenance costs, self-testing and automated reporting status, eliminating the need for manual checks.
Leading on the project Will Taylor, from Granger Fire, comments on the ease of installation.
“Hochiki products are famously easy to install, and FIREscape Nepto was no different. The theatre is quite a large space and so we initially scoped 5 to 6 days for the installation plus commission. In the end it only took 4 days, plus a day for commissioning. We were also able to retrofit using a lot of the old cabling to save on waste, and the new system enabled us to fault find any issues with that old cable so we could replace it if needed.”
Technical Theatre Manager Xenia Bayer says:
“The communication with both the Grainger team and Hochiki throughout has been brilliant, we were able to work around shows all the while ensuring everyone’s safety. The new system is so much more aesthetically pleasing and saves so much space compared to the previous bulky system. The best outcome is that over the year, based on the old system running costs, we predict we’ll be able to save almost 40 times the energy which equates to just less than £900 in savings a year. In our world that is an incredible amount of money which we will be able to plough back into the theatre and the many projects we run for our local and wider theatrical communities”.
The Unity Theatre case study demonstrates the power of intelligent emergency lighting systems. Facilities managers seeking to reduce operational costs and improve efficiency should consider similar solutions. Reduced maintenance, energy savings, and a safer environment – all contribute to a more sustainable and financially sound operation.
Learn more about FIREscape Nepto from Hochiki.
