Marine Apartments Port Melbourne

Project Scope

The Marine Apartments is an eight storey 43 apartment complex, set back from Port Philip Bay. The building is 16 years old & has two levels of car park at ground and basement level.

The building’s Owner’s Corporation has been actively seeking ways to reduce the building’s energy consumption for close to five years. In 2009, Marine Apartments was one of ten apartment complexes to sign up to the first round of the City of Port Philip’s SOCs & Blocks program. Short for Sustainable Owners Corporations and Apartment Blocks, SOCs & Blocks is a program to encourage the uptake of sustainable technology and practices in the operation of apartment buildings in the City of Port Phillip. The free program offered a Council engaged consultant to undertake a sustainability assessment.

A lighting upgrade of common area lighting was highlighted as one of the actions that offered the best return on investment, triggering the Owner’s Corporation to investigate a range of lighting technologies. The lighting upgrade was split into two stages, with the back of house areas –the two level of car park approved for stage 1. Front of house areas including foyers and internal lift lobbies, were earmarked for stage 2.

The existing standard & emergency lighting in the two levels of car park was a mixture of single & twin 36W T8 fluorescent tube fixtures driven by electronic ballasts. The lights operated 24/7 and had no energy saving controls.

Lighting technologies assessed

• T5 Fluorescent tubes
• LED tubes with networked controls system
• Chamaeleon LED light

According to Owner’s Corporation committee executive, James Rodrigo, the decision was made to go with the Chamaeleon LED light, as it offered the better return on investment through 85% energy savings & reduced maintenance stemming from the product’s 50,000 hour lifetime. The stand alone Chamaeleon also had a lower redundancy factor than other lighting solutions with separate control systems, reducing the risk of failure, which could result in a whole zone of lights failing.

The Chamaeleon light operates on a standby level of light during unoccupied periods. The average standby usage is 7.5W, which increases to 28W when a presence is detected in the area via a microwave sensor.

Products Used

The basement & ground floor car park levels required  24 hour lighting, including emergency lighting. 159 T8 fluorescent tubes and 6 compact fluorescent lights were replaced with 104 Chamaeleon lights, including 19 emergency lights, generating lighting levels above those specified in the Australian standards  for car park driveways. 

From first to last: Fluorescent lights at car park entry and Chamaeleon LED lights post retrofit

The ceiling mounted 10 chip Chamaeleon light was specified by Enlighten’s Robert Filipovic following a site audit and installed by Delmore Electriks.

From left: Chamaeleon LED light on full light output (31Watts) and standby modes (7 Watts) 

Project Results

Prior to the retrofit, car park lighting accounted for 24.4% of the Marine Apartments total electricity bill. Front of house lighting – foyers, lift lobbies accounted for a further 34%. Following the car park lighting retrofit the average annual consumption per dwelling dropped 40% from 2487kWh to 1490 kWh.

Source: Marine Apartments Executive Committee

The retrofit project return on investment of 2.5 years is calculated from electricity and maintenance savings and energy efficiency rebates.

The building’s Executive Committee applied for Victorian Energy Efficiency Certificates from the project under the Energy Savings Incentive (ESI) Scheme, as the Chamaeleon has been accepted for use in commercial lighting upgrade projects. The project’s Accredited Certificate Provider, Ecovantage, generated 136 certificates returning a net sum of $1080 to Marine Apartments.