In early 2015, the City of Hastings began revitalizing its downtown. The first stage of the project involved redeveloping Levee Park on the Mississippi River, just north of historic downtown Hastings. Barr partnered with the city and Bolton & Menk, Inc. (a civil and landscape design consultant) to design and install new LED lighting systems. Barr's design team also helped replace the 30-year-old lighting along Second Street with new LED lighting retrofits.
The new LED lighting system is most notable for its efficiency. While designing the system to meet Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) standard “commercial collector” criteria, Barr was able to reduce the wattage to one-fourth of what the old, high-pressure, sodium-lamped system used.
In addition to the increased efficiency, the new system can also be dimmed for more energy savings and extended LED life. The city further took advantage of this feature by employing lighting-control technology, which enables each luminaire to be separately controlled and dimmed using a graphical interface.
The lighting control system employs a head-end smart-server, which communicates over the power wiring to a module in the base of each pole. Poles and luminaires can be assigned to groups depending on the needs of the city. The system also detects the amount of energy being used, whether the luminaires are operational, and any anomalies or flaws.