Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Southwest Region's First LED Runway Lights



Hollis Municipal Airport in Oklahoma is the first airfield in the Southwest Region (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico) to operate with FAA-certified LED medium intensity runway edge lights (MIRLs).

The airport's out-of-date incandescent runway lights had been in poor shape, and Garver provided engineering services to install the state-of-the-art LED system. Garver designed a new electrical vault, regulators, and 45 fixture lighting circuit that together are anticipated to reduce airfield energy costs by 25 percent. The airfield's new LED lighting fixtures save approximately 450 watts of power usage, and the fixtures are expected to last more than 50 times longer than incandescent lamps. Combined with reduced relamping costs and maintenance hours, the energy savings roughly equate to a five-year return on investment as compared to incandescent fixtures.

Williams Electric constructed the runway portion of the lighting system in approximately one month, despite record snows and ice, which minimized impact to businesses based at the airport. Now that the lights are operational, local tenants say the new LED lights—even on low intensity—are more visible than the old lights at high intensity.

The project also included new LED airfield signs, taxiway edge reflectors, and an electrical vault transclosure.

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