My Wal-Mart does the same. Except ALL of the lights go off if it gets bright enough. When a storm moved in once, half came back on, and then all of them again. Weird, but I guess it works.

My walmart's fluorescents do the bright/dim thing with the daylight too, and when it gets bright enough they'll just kick off altogether. Seems to happen sequentially starting from the middle of the store and working to the sides bank by bank. When they kick back on the opposite happens, they start from the sides and go inwards...its actually kind of cool to watch. I would say they have it dialed in pretty well because unless you're actually looking at the lights the overall brightness level in the store seems to stay about the same...but of course us light guys notice such things

One of the best things they've done though is switch out all the soft white bulbs for daylight ones...it was part of a huge remodel they did a couple of years ago. Before the switch I would say 40% - 50% of the lights in the store were dead or dying, it looked nasty.

My WalMart has skylights, but I don't think they dim or cut bulbs out, but all of the Phillips T8 bulbs have faded down (some out) on their own !!!   

Powell

There is a new Best Buy store here that also has a lighting system sorta like Walmart's... but I think it just does on/off - no dimming.

I was in the local Walmart a couple days ago.. majority of the lights are still 5000k, but there's a fair number of Cool-White randomly mixed in, and some Warm-White too :? whoever is doing the bulb replacements there is not doing a very good job

The ones here are all Phillips Alto CW color, and a few were replaced with Warm White 3000K and some of those have already failed...I think the ballast is bad. Someone needs to to do a store wide relamping and fixing the dead or failing ballasts.  Soon I may have to go there with a flashlight!


Powell

I was in a Wal-mart yesterday that has the adaptive lighting system. The store was dark, I felt like I was in a warehouse. I don't know how they expect anyone to buy anything that requires picking out colors. I am all for saving energy, but this is way over board. While I was waiting for my wife, I was watching the lighting system. The clouds must of cleared because row by row all the lights went out except for the lights around the edge of the store. Within a few moments, a cloud must of came over the store because row by row the lights came back on, dim at first then came up in brightness to about half to three quarters of normal. I find it annoying, because I notice the brightness difference as it is ever changing. I don't like Wal-mart, we only go there for a few things. Thankfully the Meijer that we shop at does not have adaptive lighting. I think adaptive lighting could be a good thing if it were done right but the way Wal-mart does it is terrible. Not to mention thy use the crappy Phillips lamps and a good number of them are out or glowing pink.