Target Gets ‘Smart’ About Lighting

Target is taking its lighting to the next level. The retailer tapped Acuity Brands to provide Target stores with smart lighting technologies, featuring energy-saving LED fixtures and dimming controls. Target will be exclusively installing Acuity’s next generation, smart LED sales floor fixtures, along with its store accent lighting and distribution center site lighting.



Target, which has partnered with Acuity on various lighting and control solutions for some 20 years, will be deploying the supplier’s newest smart lighting solutions, which offer such benefits as network functionality and reduced maintenance due to the longer life of LED lamps.



Lighting is playing a crucial role in Target’s ongoing efforts to reduce energy consump tion and operational effectiveness across its footprint. In early 2015, the retailer began replacing its existing sales floor lighting (59 watt fluorescent troffers) with LED troffer retrofit kits that use 38 watt or 36 watt (later generation of the same retrofit kit), according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Alliance. The retailer chose the LED retrofit kit over other options because the kits are designed to be used in existing fixtures, which allows for an easier retrofit and minimizes waste.



AWARDS: Most recently, Target received awards in multiple categories from the DOE’s Interior Lighting Campaign, part of the Better Buildings Alliance. Launched in 2015, the ILC program is designed to address the oppor tunity for energy savings that results from updating inefficient fluorescent lamp lighting systems.



The goal for the first year was for partners to install 100,000 high-efficiency troffers, or fluorescent lighting fixtures. Troffer lighting makes up half of all fluorescent lighting fixtures and consumes nearly 96 billion kWh annually, according to DOE.



Target, one of the first to join the campaign, set the bar high for its fellow participants, with 26 M kWh saved annually for total energy cost savings of about $2.7 million. It was honored for special recognition in the ILC Awards for “Largest Portfolio-wide Annual Absolute Energy Savings,” achieving 618,000 kWh at a large-sized retrofit.