Three years ago, Lipson Co-operative Academy began the journey to make the whole learning environment more sustainable through a complete refresh of its AV and IT infrastructure, systems and operations.
Alongside switching to more energy efficient lighting, solid state drives and virtualisation of hardware, a big part of this process was replacing all the projectors, which were traditional lamp based models, to Casio’s Laser & LED Hybrid solutions.
Adam Hodgess, Learning Technology Manager at the Lipson Co-operative Academy explained: “We were getting frustrated with the lifespan of the lamp projectors, as the components needed replacing every two – three years, which when you have 73 of them is a significant and labour intensive task.
“We first became aware of Casio and its projector range at Bett Show and were over the moon to discover that there was another way!”
Casio is the pioneer of this technology and is the only manufacturer whose whole range is dedicated to it, with a long term ambition to reduce TCO, improve eco credentials and enhance all presentation environments. Major benefits include the light source remaining consistent with no drop off or fade throughout the enhanced 20,000 hour lifetime, negating the need to ever pull blinds. The significantly reduced power consumption of up to 35% and more efficient design results in an industry leading total cost of ownership.
Lipson invested in the Signature models, some of which with the widescreen feature allowing teachers to get creative with content. “Interestingly, before we made the investment in Laser & LED projectors, the original initiatives that we were putting in place to try and save power were also hindering us in terms of teaching efficiency” continues Hodgess. “Ideas such as switching units off as one teacher left the room meant that the warm up time when the next teacher arrived was impacting on their lesson.”
With the laser & LED models, there is no lamp so the projector comes to life at full brightness from the moment the button is pushed. Laser & LED are also the only type of projector that can be put on a timer and can be controlled remotely over wireless networks.
“The heat emissions from the old models were also a consideration,” says Adam, “as additional cooling infrastructure is required, either within the units or externally, to keep them cool, which also adds up to a significant drain on power.”
Due to the method of image generation with laser & LED models, the projectors don’t generate any heat during operation, also ensuring they run silently. This removes the risk of any failures as typically it is unnecessary heat that makes any technology malfunction.
“The oldest models we have from Casio are now over three years old and we have had no problems with any of them.” says Hodgess. “Casio’s 10,000 hour onsite warranty helped us with the decision to make the transition, as it equates to five years worth of usage so we knew that we couldn’t fail, when you take into consideration that we were changing the lamps every two or three years.”
“From running our own tests, we estimated that in terms of power consumption, a standard lamp based projector costs 2.59 pence per hour to run compared to 1.13p for our Casio models. Over the course of a year, our calculations tell us that this results in a saving of £1,215 in electricity for our whole projector display portfolio. This is making a real difference to our overall eco credentials.”
