University of Minho Student Residence saves on electricity use by switching to LED lighting

University of Minho, one of the most prestigious Portuguese universities, hosting 15.000 students and over 1000 teachers, divided by the two campuses in the northern cities of Braga and Guimarães.

The four student residences accommodate over 1300 students. Over a year ago, the Lloyd Braga Students Residence was the first university building to retrofit LED bulbs. The replacement of lighting equipments on the 300 student accommodation facility, with LED lamps, managed to save over 70% on the lighting account of the € 44.000 yearly electricity bill.

The failure rate on the replaced equipments (CFL and incandescent) was high, mainly on the motion detector operated equipments of the circulation areas. Therefore, maintenance costs were significantly reduced as well.

The previous CFL (18w) on the circulation areas were replaced by 4w LED “corn” type lamps, and the CFL (11w) and incandescent (40w) lamps in the rooms gave way to respectively 4.5w and 5w E27 high power LED lamps. “We didn’t change a single bulb for the last year (informed the maintenance responsible), so besides saving on power use and maintenance costs, we are drastically reducing our ecologic footprint.”

Based on the success of this first experience, this university on northern Portugal is now planning to extend LED retrofit to other buildings of the 74.000 m2 campi.