Northern operates more stations than any other train operating company in the UK, making the commitment in their new franchise agreement to reduce energy consumption across the network by 3.2 percent, every year, a particularly audacious one. The task is even more of a challenge because Northern, which has the oldest train fleet in the country and the oldest station stock, is often at the mercy of events. 

The instillation of LED across the Northern network, in train sheds and at stations, is a major part of Northern’s strategy to slash the yearly three percent.

We caught up with Euan Hilton, utilities contracts and data manager at Northern, during this year's LuxLive, to see how the operation is going.

The last frontier of the LED revolution has been high-power applications such as high-mast area lighting, where fixtures with massive lumen packages are required. It now looks like that last frontier is being well and truly conquered, as organisations switch from discharge technologies. A good example is Heathrow Airport in London, one of the busiest airports in the world. The apron lighting has now been upgraded fom high-pressure sodium to LED. 

Lighting professionals: What you see may upset you. Ray Molony counts down Lighting Spy’s Top 40 worst crimes, blunders and screw-ups.

A French firm has won the contract to supply internet-over-lighting technology on the Paris Metro. The ambitious project – which will allow over two million daily commuters to use lights as a form of Wi-fi, dubbed ‘Li-fi’ – now looks firmly on track. Already La Defense station has been successfully equipped with the tech.

Our Value Proposition looks at the benefits of upgrading from traditional fluorescent tubes to LED arrays in a typical car park scheme, using IP-rated luminaires.

There must be things that the hard-pressed facilities manager can do to make their job just a little bit easier, and maybe save a bit of money for better things. Here’s a list of actions that shouldn’t take too much effort to work out and which should see immediate benefits.

The Circular Economy is a design strategy that can revolutionise the way that we make light fittings. But will we take it on?