New Led Lighting System Now Illuminating Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home & Visitors Center

The Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home & Visitors Center in Dixon, Ill., recently underwent a LED lighting retrofit that highlights the park-like grounds and bronze statue of the former president. Though tours of the home are only available during the day, the park is open to visitors 24 hours a day, year round. For that reason, lighting for the park and statue must operate from dusk until dawn 365 days a year or around 4,000 hours annually. Unfortunately, the park's lighting had failed to offer adequate lighting for many years.

The facility's managers contacted Arne Venteris of Avnet Energy, an Illinois-based energy consultant, and he toured the grounds with Ken Buccola, who heads up the property's volunteer maintenance team. Venteris found that all of the existing metal-halide fixtures were either in ill repair or beyond repair, and they were constantly experiencing outages. Venteris then contacted Randy Breske of Precision-Paragon, a lighting manufacturer based in Yorba Linda, Calif., to develop a solution.

Using Precision-Paragon's LED spot optic fixtures, the Reagan Memorial Park maintenance team installed two fixtures aimed at the statue, two aimed at the park's American and Illinois state flags, and six highlighting the canopy of trees surrounding the pathways and statue. Unlike the old fixtures, the new ones are all above ground, eliminating the potential for weather damage and outages.

“The new fixtures offer energy savings of 4,240 kilowatt hours and a cost savings of $500 per year,” says Breske. Plus, they last longer — the park won't have to replace their LED fixtures for a very long time. The Reagan Memorial Park shows that any facility can benefit from a lighting upgrade. No project is too small — we replaced 15 metal-halides with 10 LED fixtures and the difference in lighting quality and savings is tremendous. Bigger facilities have the opportunity to save even more.”