Application: Retail   Location: Sunoco, Various Location, Northeast US Product: ICETRON Lamps, QUICKTRONIC ICE Ballasts SYLVANIA Commercial Engineer: Dirk Hinterleiter Literature: ICETRON Lamp PIB:  Download QUICKTRONIC Ballast PIB:  Download

ICETRON Systems Extend Sign Relamp Intervals to 10 years for Sunoco Gas Stations
 
The Situation

Sunoco's Northeast region was using 400, 250 and 175-watt metal halide lamps to illuminate 18-foot and 22-foot diameter roadside signs with mounting heights from 35 to 100 feet. Each sign contained between six and 10 lamps. Sunoco's relamp schedule for these signs was every two years. With these mounting heights, the cost to perform the relamp was high due to the equipment required to access the signs. Sunoco was looking for ways to reduce their maintenance costs.

The Solution

The solution to reducing the overall cost of the relamping program was to use SYLVANIA 100-watt and 150-watt ICETRON® systems. These systems comprise of an inductively coupled electrode-less lamp and electronic ballast with an average rated life of 100,000 hours compared to 10,000 - 20,000 hours for the metal halide lamps.

Sunoco replaced its existing signs with new signs, designed by Everbrite and ProSign, which are illuminated with the ICETRON system. Each metal halide lamp and ballast system was replaced with an ICETRON system one for one. The sign illuminance was equal or improved compared to the metal halide lamps. Thanks to the improved CRI of the ICETRON lamp over the metal halide lamps previously used, the sign appearance also was enhanced.

To date over 270 Sunoco gas station locations have replaced their signs with the SYLVANIA ICETRON. The major advantage for Sunoco is the 10-year relamp cycle with the ICETRON systems, thereby greatly reducing the overall cost of their sign maintenance program.