Most plants don’t need new fixtures
In many plants across Northeast Mississippi and the Mid-South, the LED high-bays are already in. What’s missing is control: fixtures that know which shift is running, which bays are empty, and which station needs more light. So the real question is whether your plant needs a new lighting system or a smarter way to run the one it has. More often than not, it’s the second.
Where plants waste light
Plants here run on shifts. A furniture or upholstery plant may run one long shift with a cleaning crew after it; an automotive supplier may run three shifts with a skeleton crew on weekends. Either way, the lighting usually runs on one rule: on when the first person arrives, off when the last person leaves, if anyone remembers.
The waste shows up in predictable places:
- Idle lines. Second shift runs two of five lines, and all five bays stay at full output.
- Storage. Racks of raw material and finished goods are visited a few times an hour and lit continuously.
- Over-lighting. New LED high-bays are often left at full output everywhere, including travel aisles that need far less light than the cutting tables.
- Weekends and holidays. A maintenance crew needs three bays, and the schedule lights the building.
How we approach a plant
We start on the floor, during a running shift, with the production manager. We map lines, cells, storage, and travel paths, and note where people stand still and look closely at their work. That map becomes the zoning, not the electrical one-line diagram.
Then we write the sequence. On a production floor, our default is low, not off: vacant bays drop to a background level instead of going dark, because sightlines around moving equipment matter and full light snapping on beside a worker is a distraction. In storage, aisles can go off or nearly off, because there is nobody to surprise. At inspection stations, we set a higher trim and measure it, so quality never pays for the energy savings.
High-bay sensing is its own discipline. Mounting heights of 25 to 40 feet, roof-deck heat in a Mississippi July, sanding dust, and crane vibration all change what a sensor sees. We test candidate sensors in the Lytbit Lab at the mounting height and lens pattern we plan to use, before anything is ordered.
Harsh and hazardous areas
Finishing rooms, spray booths, dust collection, and washdown areas get their own treatment. If an area is classified, its fixtures and devices must be listed for that classification, and many wireless nodes and sensors are not. We usually control those areas from outside the classified space with simple switching or scheduling, and we say so on the drawings. Where moisture or washdown is the issue, we specify enclosure ratings and confirm them at submittal review.
The HVAC handshake
The occupancy data your lighting collects is useful beyond lighting. A bay that has been empty for an hour doesn’t need its unit heaters at full setpoint or its make-up air at full flow, as long as the mechanical design allows a setback. We map bay-level occupancy to BACnet points the building automation system can read, agree on the logic with your mechanical engineer or controls contractor, and test the handshake during commissioning. DLC’s NLC 5.2 requirements now include HVAC integration, which shows where the industry is heading.
Incentives and code
Depending on location, plants in our region are served by TVA local power companies, Entergy Mississippi, or Mississippi Power. TVA EnergyRight requires pre-approval before equipment is purchased and gives additional credit for networked controls, so the order of operations matters. We prepare the application package and coordinate with your local power company and program staff before anything is ordered, and our incentive management service carries the paperwork through to payment.
On the code side, a lighting alteration in an existing plant can trigger control requirements for the altered area. Which energy code edition applies varies by jurisdiction, so we confirm it with the authority having jurisdiction on every project. Recent editions, including ASHRAE 90.1-2022 and the 2024 IECC, require functional testing of lighting controls, and we provide that documentation on every job.
What we’d do first
Walk one shift change with your production manager. The hour around a shift change tells us more about a plant’s lighting than a month of drawings. For a structured version, start with a Baseline Assessment, or read how we’d approach an upholstery plant in our representative scenario.
