LED Lighting for Arenas and Stadiums
Universities and professional sports teams across the country have been switching to LED lighting for an improved, quality presentation at their facilities. Duke, Miami, Cornell, and Ohio are among the leading universities to switch to solid-state lighting in the past decade. This article will explore the transition to LED technology, the benefits of LED lighting, and everything else you need to know about stadium lighting.
Why University Lighting Is Heading Toward LED Technology
Top universities are tasked with balancing quality campus facilities for athletes, coaches, and boosters with top-class educational experiences for students and teachers. When it comes to creating an equally balanced budget, do you choose between the two? Now, you don’t have to.
Turn to LED lighting. Schools and teams that have switched to advanced lighting sources reduce their energy and overall costs while providing a well-lit product on the field. Listed below are just a few of the reasons why stadium lighting, university lighting, and LED lighting for arenas are heading toward the future of the industry:
An Enjoyable Experience With Improved Illumination
Installing or retrofitting LED lighting into an arena or stadium is the best solution for effective stadium illumination. LED technology is an excellent choice from a visual standpoint, rendering colors to look like natural sunlight while evenly distributing across the playing surface and into the crowd. And LED lighting isn’t just visually pleasing, it is safer for players and fans, increasing overall visibility within the venue.
Lighting fixture illumination in LED systems also helps to produce the best quality TV viewership and streaming color quality for an enjoyable experience at home. It gives the facility managers many options they did not previously have, like instant off and on, flashing, and color changing.
Energy Savings
LED technology creates and delivers more lumens per watt than any other traditional source for stadium lighting available on the market. In fact, LED sources can cut up to two-thirds of the wattage usage that fixtures like HID or metal halide consume. For instance, a 600-watt LED luminaire produces the same amount of lumens as a 1,500-watt halide or HID source. LED lighting for arenas and stadiums can immediately cut between 60% to 66% of energy usage while providing a more visually pleasing experience.
Reduced Maintenance Costs
The upfront cost of HID, fluorescent, and incandescent light bulbs is the only aspect of traditional lighting sources that are cheaper than LED systems. In fact, LED lighting has an increased service lifespan of up to 80% compared to its traditional counterpart, so you will only have to replace lamps once every decade. The reduced maintenance cost of LED technology allows operational teams to allocate funds in the budget to other needed facility upgrades.
Instant Control
Is your budget racking up expensive electricity bills and power charges every month? If so, your facility likely operates with a traditional, inefficient lighting system. With an LED system, facility managers are granted complete control over all lighting operations at the push of a button. There is no wait for full-on output, as with HID systems that have to warm-up. You can easily track lighting levels on a smartphone, iPad, or laptop while making immediate changes to any aspect. Lighting changes include pre-set levels, auto-off or on, SMS codes, remote checking, or color rendering. Digital control is multi-functional, allowing all managers to accurately monitor energy outputs by the minute.
Are you interested in learning more about LED lighting for arenas and stadiums? Check out this guide to LED sports field lighting.
How to Choose the Best LED Lighting For Arenas and Stadiums
Deciding to install LED technology is an excellent way to immediately boost lighting quality and capacity in your sports facility, however, looking for good quality products from a reputable provider, like NGU Sports Lighting, is still important. Below, we’ll review what to consider before implementing LED lighting:
Search for Quality
When looking for a LED lighting system, you’re searching for quality products with reliable results and performance over time. The best thing to do in your search is to consider top-end components from expert providers like NGU Sports Lighting. The LED driver for a system is the leading component or part to keep in mind during your search. A good driver ensures an extended service lifespan with little to no maintenance required.
Quality drivers and lighting systems as a whole also avoid any lighting disaster. Even if there is a brief outage, LED lights have no warm-up period, so you never have to worry about a situation like the 2013 Super Bowl, when the field went dark for 15 minutes..
Glare
Glare is a significant lighting factor that can disrupt the vision of athletes on the field, coaches on the sidelines, photographers and fans in the stands, and neighbors outside of the facilities. All solid-state lighting systems are designed to reduce glare by having better control of the light output, but the quality and precision engineering of different products varies widely. Be sure to look for the best optic lens shields during your search. Quality LED technology combined with your team’s expert aiming design will minimize any glare concerns in your venue.
Light Color
Light source color-correlated temperature (CCT) measured in kelvin is the standard for arena or stadium lighting. 5,000 K pure white is the preferred temperature for outdoor facilities, as that is what our eyes prefer. Indoor color temperatures may vary depending on the sport, but LED systems lend the greatest choices.
Color Rendering
Be sure to verify the color rendering index (CRI) of every lighting system your organization considers. CRI measures the ability to give an accurate color rendering of persons or objects. The best and most reliable LED lighting systems have a CRI of 75 or higher.
NGU Sports Lighting: Your Source for the Best LED Sports Field Lighting
Since pioneering LED sports field lighting in 2012, our attention to detail has proved successful in many venues nationwide. We’ve got you covered whether you are looking for LED lighting for a professional sports facility, university, high school, or a local youth sports park. Contact our team of experts for a brighter future today.