Let there be… a Lighting Project ~ Stephen Tomlin

This week we have had electricians in the church summiting scaffolding to give us a new set of lights! The old lights are being replaced with new, more efficient LED type lights.  ln church, four LED lights have been on test for a couple of months... and you probably haven't noticed.

This project has been under development over quite a few months and was triggered back in July 2025 by the invitation from the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) firstly to carry out an energy survey of our church building and Centre and then subsequently to apply for a “Green Business Grant” to help cover the cost of implementing some of their recommended improvements. Grants of up to 30% were available for projects in our area aimed at reducing energy usage.

As well as their relatively high energy usage, our existing church lighting system has been posing a few other problems, with replacement lamps becoming obsolete and so very difficult to source, and the act of replacing the lamps at high level off a ladder becoming increasingly challenging! 

There are about 100 halogen spotlights in the church. These are now relatively energy intensive, consuming about 5,000kWh of electricity over a year. The new LED lights will consume only 19% of that amount (yes, an 81% reduction) and should reduce our carbon emissions by about 1.4 tonnes CO2 per annum.  They also have a lamp life of around 50,000 hours, so it should be many years before any need replacing.

The overall cost of replacing all 100 lamps and fittings in the church is likely to be around £15,000, less the grant funding of £5,000.

In parallel with this work we are also changing the remaining “old “lights in the Church Centre and replacing them with new LED lights. This will bring similar benefits, albeit on a slightly smaller scale as many of the lights have already been upgraded.

The trial of the new LED lamps has been running since November last year when we replaced the lights which focus on the baptismal font at the back of church.  That has been working successfully and has given us the confidence to go ahead with replacing the rest of the lights.

The new lights are being installed this week and should be in and working by Sunday. In passing, while we have a scaffold tower in the church, we will be taking the opportunity to do some high-level dusting!

Many thanks to John Rich for leading and managing this project for us.