CONSCIOUS CHRISTMAS
Visitors will not be cheated of Christmas lights and Christmas spirit in Ringsted Outlet, but to reduce electricity consumption in 2022, the time during which the lights are on will be greatly reduced, and the Christmas lights will replace the regular street lighting where possible. This means that, during the darkest evening hours on weekdays from 16:30 to 19:00 until 15 December and from 16:00 to 20:00 between 15 December and Christmas, as well as all day on selected major shopping days such as Black Friday and the weekends leading up to Christmas, visitors will still be able to enjoy the beautiful lights and the Christmas spirit.
The Christmas lights in Ringsted Outlet are LED bulbs and had a total consumption of 3.6 KwH in 2021, when all installations were switched on. Thus, Christmas lighting usually accounts for less than 2% of total annual consumption, which in 2021 totalled 124,191 Kwh for all common areas of the outlet village. Investments into new decorations for gables and windows have been made in 2022, before the current energy crisis changed the agenda, and thus the total energy consumption in KwH will increase to 5.16 KwH when everything is switched on, but this increase will be more than offset by the reduction in the number of hours during which the lights are on, and the new decorations will mean that the Christmas lighting will be able to replace some of the more energy-intensive street lighting that has been switched on at the same time previously.
All Christmas lights are connected to lux sensors with attached timers that allow the lights to be controlled manually. The reduced switch-on time will result in a saving in the total energy consumption for Christmas lighting of at least 50%, and the remaining consumption will be offset by corresponding savings in other energy consumption, which together will ensure an ambitious reduction of at least 15% in energy consumption over the winter months from October to April.
In the period from 2019 and until autumn 2022, a large number of measures have been introduced to optimise energy consumption in Ringsted Outlet’s common areas, resulting in a total saving of 17%. These include:
ENERGY MEASURES FOR 2022
In addition to the reduction in Christmas light hours, 20% of the lighting in the car park, primarily in the outer car parks, has been switched off, and new and more energy-efficient bulbs are being delivered for replacement in the parking areas and along the building walls in November/December 2022. In addition, it has been decided to reduce the extended Christmas opening hours to only the last week before Christmas, as opposed to the whole month of December.
OPEN DOORS
The shops in Ringsted Outlet practise an open door policy, which means that the doors are kept open when the weather permits. The background heat from spotlights, other technical installations and customers means that there are only a few weeks a year when it is necessary to use heating sources in the stores. Therefore, you may find that the doors of the shops are open, even if it is only a few degrees outside. On days when the temperatures get so low that the shop decides to switch on the heating, the doors are of course kept closed.