Las Vegas Sands Properties Conserve Energy with LED Lighting
As published on the Sands Confidential blog
As part of its award-winning sustainability program, Sands ECO360, Las Vegas Sands remains committed to energy conservation at all of its properties around the world. In 2011, the sustainability team embarked on replacing lighting with LED light bulbs. The sustainability team created their own in-house testing labs where thousands of LED light bulbs were tested. They became experts on the topic and established a global implementation to all properties and currently, Las Vegas’ lighting is 80% LED, Marina Bay Sands is at 71% and Sands China Ltd. properties are at 95%.
In partnership with General Electric, the development of a new LED lamp specifically for the meetings and conventions spaces was launched in Las Vegas and in 2015 The St. Regis Macao and The Parisian Macao were specifically designed to be the first of the company’s properties to have 100% LED lighting. The Eiffel Tower at The Parisian Macao is equipped with 6,700 LED bulbs which use 50% less energy compared to incandescent and xenon lights that would have normally been installed.
“At our Sands China Ltd. (SCL) properties, energy efficient lighting improvement projects began in 2011 through energy audits, piloting of technologies and accelerated implementation of efficiency measures between 2013 and 2017 with a series of projects across all facilities in Macao,” said Syed Mubarak, executive director, MEP and Plant Operations at SCL. “More than 95% of our overall space is fitted with LED lighting and we have replaced more than a million light bulbs through over 100 lighting projects in the past four to five years with an estimated savings of about 53 million kWh. The projects in the pipeline from 2018 through 2019 will lead us to achieve our goal of 100% LED lighting by 2020.”
As a part of promoting energy efficiency in homes, the “Energy Saving Roadshow” is conducted every year since 2015 to engage SCL Team Members to buy LED’s at a discounted price. This initiative is well received and entices Team Members to go green at an affordable cost and reduce their monthly utility bills. Mubarak also added that the properties have control measures in place to prevent the purchase of non-LED bulbs, which has become a company-wide requirement from Procurement to require all slot machines in all casinos to now be LED as well. At the company’s property in Pennsylvania, Sands Bethlehem, 400 slot machines were converted to LED machines and since 2010, the sustainability and facilities teams have completed more than 300 projects worldwide, resulting in annual electricity savings of 247 kWh, which is more than enough to power The Venetian, The Palazzo and Sands Expo in Las Vegas combined. In Singapore, since Marina Bay Sands switched to LED lighting in 2012, the property has saved 15gWh, which can power up to over 40,000 average sized apartments in Singapore for a month.
“LED lighting was progressively introduced across the property in 2012 and Marina Bay Sands has since changed close to 100,000 light bulbs into LED lighting,” said Kevin Teng, executive director of design and construction at Marina Bay Sands. “The light bulbs are diverted to an e-waste facility to reduce environmental impact. Currently, 71 percent of our lighting fixtures are LED lights, and it is our goal to reach 90 percent by the end of 2019.”
Currently, there are 60,000 lighting fixtures installed at Marina Bay Sands and they are a combination of LED and energy efficient lightings. Besides lighting fixtures, advanced movement sensors were installed in 250 meeting rooms in the convention centre to reduce energy. These sensors are activated to work in line with the room configuration and requirements of each event. Lights in these meeting rooms automatically switch off after 15 minutes if no movement is detected and dimmable LEDs are also used in Expo halls as well as hotel rooms, to allow guests the ability to adjust the lighting based on their requirements. At the Shoppes and the hotel, photo sensors detect the brightness of sunlight and interior lights that adjust accordingly.
“Underpinning Marina Bay Sands’ overall energy management is our intelligent building management system,” Teng said. “The system has over 110,000 control points that allows automated controls over lighting, heating, air-conditioning and water supplies for the entire property. It helps the property to save over 46 million kWh of energy a year.”
