Neste Oil Express petrol station, Oulu Finland

Intelligent LED lighting guarantees a high level customer experience

Petrol stations wish to provide their customers a pleasant customer experience that consists of many factors. One essential part is the lighting at the meter field. Neste Oil´s objective is to illuminate the meter fields of their service stations in high quality manner and very – even distinctively – brightly. The purpose is to make the customer experience pleasant and safe, as well as bring forth the brand of the corporation.

Neste Oil Corporation is a leading independent northern European oil refining and marketing company. They focus on high-quality traffic fuels and other high value-added petroleum products with reduced environmental impact. The Neste Oil network spans around the Baltic Rim, and consists of almost 1200 service and automated stations, over 850 of them operating in Finland.

Neste Oil has been interested already for long in using LED technology in illuminating their petrol stations. An unmanned Neste Oil Express station in downtown Oulu, Finland has had a pilot study since fall 2010, to gain experience in LED lighting. The station had 12 metal halide 250 W light fixtures, of which half were replaced with Valopaa Ltd.´s VP2321 M12 LED light fixtures. Later on during the fall the rest were replaced with Valopaa LED light fixtures with intelligent features.

The quantity of light of the intelligent light fixtures increases to full power when a customer enters the meter field, and decreases again after the customer has left the area. The quantity of light also adjusts depending on the asphalt being wet, dry or snowy. It is possible to add other features to the intelligent system, e.g. timing and twilight switch. In addition, remote control software over Internet is available.

The pilot study shows that the development of LED technology has progressed far in the right direction. The lifetime of the Valopaa products is long and they provide substantial energy savings. They also allow adjustability and preprogramming. Furthermore, Neste Oil is able to provide their customers a high level customer experience as they visit the Neste Oil petrol stations.

The energy usage at the illumination of the meter field has been dropped by 50% compared to the previous metal halide lights. With the intelligent LED lighting system it is possible to obtain even 80% energy savings – at the same time keeping the quality and brightness of the illumination. The intelligent lighting system compensates the lumen depreciation, thus keeping the same lumen output throughout their lifetime. The operating hours is very long, over 100 000 hours, which decreases considerably the maintenance costs.

Lävistäjä Neste Oil Express -station, Oulu, Finland
Light fixtures: VP2321 M12 LED light fixtures and VP2321i M12 intelligent LED light fixtures