Bluewater shopping centre opened in 1999 across a site of 240 acres. It has 300 stores, over 50 bars, restaurants, and cafes. Situated in Kent, close to the M25 it attracts millions of people every year most of whom drive there requiring 13,000 free car parking spaces.

To ensure these vast car parks are both practical and safe to use, it’s vital that not only are the light levels appropriate 24/7 but the lighting is energy efficient to to contribute to Bluewater’s aim to reduce its energy and carbon intensity by 40% by 2030.

GA Harpers has provided electrical and other services to Bluewater since it opened more than 20 years ago and throughout this time has been supporting its estates management team to identify ways in which to improve the effective and efficiency of its lighting systems.

They have chosen light fittings from NVC for installation throughout Bluewater’s car parks and back-office areas, corridors and delivery facilities. This includes around 9,000 NVC GREENLAND IK 10, IP66 rated, non-corrosive, impact and chemical resistant industrial luminaires.

NVC’s GREENLAND luminaires form the basis of Bluewater’s car park and back of house lighting and emergency lighting system, which is controlled by Chess UK and its MyMesh technology.* This system manages dimming and timed parameters via PIR activations to give customers adequate lighting, but avoid energy being wasted when the car park is not being used. This is helping to achieve energy and cost savings of more than 60% compared with the previous lighting used.

These savings are impressive and are monitored via a Lumitel lighting control and energy monitoring system that gives Bluewater’s estates team daily usage stats viewable via a desktop platform.

In common with all commercial buildings, it is a legal requirement for shopping centres to undertake regular testing of their emergency lighting systems comprising a short functional test of each emergency lighting fixture once a month and a full discharge test every year.

To further improve efficiency at Bluewater, the emergency lighting based on NVC luminaires is self-testing removing the need to walk around the facilities and manually undertake the required testing. This not only saves time and cost it also means that the reports generated by the bespoke platform we developed, which details the IDs of the fittings and their locations, are always 100% complete, accurate and timely. In addition, any emergency lighting issues are identified and can be rectified and addressed when required rather than waiting until the ‘’planned ‘’ emergency testing that would be required if this type of system was not in place.

G A Harpers Electrical Manager Warren Thornton says: “We have been specifying NVC’s lighting for several years because their supply is very good and their support is excellent. Now with the introduction of a 7-year warranty on their products we have an extra reason to stick with their products.”