Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty, and Don Lepard, president and CEO of Global Green Lighting, this week announced the company’s plans to hire as many as 250 people at a newly established lighting assembly facility in Chattanooga. The move is creating jobs for Tennesseans by bringing subcontracted production back from China.
“I want to congratulate GGL on this great announcement and ... [thank them] for their investment in Hamilton County and Tennessee,” Gov. Haslam said.
GGL recently acquired an 180,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Chattanooga and has set up production lines to assemble a light emitting diode street lamp combined with automated metering infrastructure technology. EPB, Chattanooga’s municipally-owned power provider, has certified GGL’s outdoor lighting solution, making it the world’s only product of its kind authenticated by an electric utility to deliver energy savings.
“By marrying our locally designed and manufactured LED and Induction light fixtures with our wireless radio control technology, we have created ... [an] advanced lighting and energy monitoring system,” said Lepard. “In addition to certified, measured energy savings and carbon credits, the GGL system offers ... [several] improvements over traditional street lights – improved lighting quality and color, wireless monitoring to track exact energy usage, and situational functionality such as scheduled or manual override dimming. The adjustable up light filters offer an optional elimination of light pollution. The system also self-reports the location and diagnostics for malfunctions within 15 seconds of the occurrence, and the expected life of these lights is five times longer than the old, traditional lights.”
GGL’s expansion will create 40 new jobs immediately. By the end of 2013, GGL expects to hire 160 assembly workers. The company also expects to hire 50 people for sales, marketing, customer service, and equipment maintenance.
After a successful pilot project in one of Chattanooga’s public parks, the City of Chattanooga contracted with GGL to replace all of its 27,000 streetlights with the new technology. Upon completion of the project at the end of 2013, Chattanooga officials expect to cut lighting bills up to 75 percent per year.
Other cities are also taking notice of GGL’s sustainable, low energy lighting system. The company is in active communications with 26 cities, the first of 250 identified in its target marketing strategy. In addition, GGL also plans to market the lighting technology to private developments and enterprises that can tie their outdoor lighting into the same infrastructure used by the public sector.
With GGL’s radio network lighting, the city can turn street lamps on and off in real time and tailor the brightness of each lamp based on a neighborhood’s lighting needs. The system records the GPS coordinates of each lamppost and correlates the location with dawn and dusk times so the lights come on only when needed. Each individual street lamp includes a residential grade meter and alerts maintenance workers via the wireless network when a bulb is out, power is lost, or if repairs are needed. Energy usage is automatically fed back to the local electric company billing system, eliminating the need for manual meter readers. In other words, each light auto meters and auto reports its status.
Source: State of Tennessee