The Arnold Clark Innovation Centre is proud to reveal it is turning renewable energy into smart lighting.
The new £5million site opened earlier this year on Dumbarton Road in Glasgow’s west end, with the aim of educating customers about the benefits of alternative fuel vehicles and why they are becoming so important.
It also serves as a training academy, with sessions to help educate Arnold Clark employees on the latest innovations in driving and the latest electric models coming to its branches.
And in an innovative step, the Arnold Clark Innovation Centre is using OMNILED, a Smart Energy Platform, powered by wind and solar, with built-in energy storage.
It’s a solution which has been brought to the UK by Digital Placemaking Ltd, which is one of the NVT Group of companies based in Lanarkshire.
Its unique and patented design blends advanced aerodynamics with a simple geometry, which enables continuous operation.
Solar cells cover the top surface of each unit, while its distinctive shape, based on an inverted wing aerofoil, directs the free wind stream from any direction to a diffuser, which creates a speed-up effect into a central wind turbine.
The generated renewable energy is stored in each unit’s enclosed batteries and provides power to its integrated LED bulbs, which serve as lighting for the Innovation Centre.
OMNILED deployments can be found in countries worldwide, including Portugal, Bangladesh, Brazil, Morocco, Belgium, Turkey, Australia, Colombia, Germany, U.A.E., China, U.S.A., Ireland, Italy, Mongolia and Angola.
However, the four units installed at the Innovation Centre are the first of its kind to be found in the UK.
All four of the units, which are fitted to eight-metre-tall poles, illuminates up to a diameter of 20 metres, with switch on-off, dimming and trimming all able to be controlled using handheld devices. The web-based monitoring and control platform also includes access to a dashboard showing energy usage, carbon reduction, temperature, wind speed and more.
However, OMNILED is much more than a generator of smart lighting and renewable energy. It is also a platform for multiple Internet of Things (IoT) applications in one smart pole infrastructure. Add-on applications can include electric vehicle charging stations, CCTV surveillance, Wi-Fi hotspots, digital signage and sensors which monitor the likes air quality, crowd density and flooding.
Brian Devlin, Managing Director of Digital Placemaking Ltd, said: “With the COP26 conference right around the corner, we are delighted to be working with Arnold Clark and showing the rest of the UK our cutting-edge OMNILED platform, which combines LED lighting with innovative sensor technology in a single platform that also uses wind and solar power to reduce energy costs and carbon footprint, ensuring a “win-win” for all.
“The Innovation Centre is the perfect location to showcase this in a real working environment, building on our roll-out across the world, helping declutter the landscape by housing all of these services in a single unit, with real live management information 24/7, controlled from your fingertips wherever you may be.”
Innovation Centre Debbie Hubner added: "At its heart the Innovation Centre is an educational space so it’s great to be able to showcase cutting-edge technology to our visitors, both in our AFVs and other innovative projects.
"Our Omniflow lights always create an interesting discussion with visitors during our site tours and we’re proud to have the very first examples in the UK here in Glasgow."
For more information about OMNILED, visit here.