LED sports lighting or stadium lighting is on its fast development nowadays with the maturity of outdoor LED sport lighting fixtures. LED is a new technology that is inherently brighter than standard Metal Halide or HPS sources, and which is supplanting the latter, becoming the primary source to be installed on sports fields.
LED is 3 times brighter than a Metal Halide for the same power; and it can save 70% energy, generating long-run returns, if lighting effect is kept similar. That is why LED lights are ideal for replacement and retrofitting in sports fields, stadiums, grounds, pitches and facilities.
While mounting LED sports lights you should take into consideration the level you intend to play at: amateur vs professional. Between those standards there is variance on the lux required and on the uniformity needed. The poles location can also affect the version and model of LED sports Lights you shall procure, as some are developed for close range whereas others work better from long distances.
Cost of LED Football Field Lighting
If you have an amateur to semi-professional ground, the cost of the LED sports lights should vary between $25,000 to $45,000. Specifics related to your installation and type of light chosen determine the final price.
In the case you are aiming at mounting and replacing new LED sports lights for a professional stadium and field, then you can prepare roughly $90,000 USD.
LED Sports Lighting Design
There are several factors that impact the amount and type of lighting you will choose:
A. Lux Levels
The higher the brightness you want in the ground, the more lights or the higher grade that needs to be installed.
B. Uniformity Requirements
The more uptight the uniformity is (especially for highly professional sports fields that have TV broadcasting), the more lighting efficiency you need to sacrifice into general effect.
C. How Many Poles in Your Installation
The more poles you have (even if they are relatively low), the easier it is to maintain good uniformity without having to waste extra energy. In addition, the lighting beams and flux do not necessarily need to reach as farther, which makes it more straightforward when it comes to lighting distribution by using LED sports lights.
D. Pole Location
This is especially important when there are installations with 4 poles. In those cases, if you need to mount LED sports lights, soccer or football lighting, the location of the mast is vital. If the 4 poles run alongside the sidelines, they are closer to the pitch and lighting effect can be achieved much easily.
However, if the 4 poles are placed on the corners of the pitch and are at some distance from the field of play, more advanced LED sports lights with 3rd generation optics must be used to cover that wider gap.
E. Pole Height
Whenever an installation as fewer poles, like for example configurations of 4 sports lights high masts, it is essential that the poles are high enough to allow cross lighting. This happens because since they are farther from each other and also farther from the center of the pitch, they need enough room to be able to get the beams propelled across a much wider distance; therefore, with taller poles, a configuration of 4 masts is possible, even if they are located at the corner of the sports field and pitch, at some distance from the sidelines.
In many sports, players’ playing process involves tailing balls, after they have flown across the pitch. According to stadium lux lighting features and requirements, there are some lux LED lighting quality goals for football stadium lights and other stadiums. As a whole, the lux lighting level in stadiums at nighttime should be almost as much as during daytime: pure white light color, pure color, bright and clear, stable and smooth lights without fluctuation, and no glaring.
Sports light fixtures can be subdivided as general LED field lights, or, LED sports field lighting with accurate aim. Usually we apply LED flood lights to these professional areas, sometimes we can also use high mast LED sports lamps, depending on the high mast installation and pole height.
To design stadium lighting, two important factors should be considered. The first one is to meet players’ visual requirements in the game, and to lower the objective effects to the games from lamplights as less as possible. The second one is to meet the audience’s visual requirements, to make sure they don’t feel uncomfortable in the games from the lux light.
For a professional LED sport field, in the beginning we must determine a lighting standard to get a good lighting design and meet players, audience, and referees’ requirements to visual experience and good TV broadcasting effects by using light distribution correctly. That includes lux lighting standard and lighting quality standard. In terms of the latter, it includes anti-glaring, CRI requirements to color temperature of light source, light direction, and energy-saving capacity.
Stadium lighting has to meet many lighting effect standards. But in terms of actual sports and exercise, amateur stadiums don’t necessarily have to adopt all these lighting standards. It can be decided in a reasonable range by investors and operators, according to investment situation, players’ playing skills and other technical and economic factors.
Many stadium lighting cases show that if an amateur stadium lighting can guarantee the following five aspects in lighting quality, then it can meet the playing and exercising demand, whether they are soccer field lights or baseball lights or other sports lighting.
E. Anti-glaring LED Sports Lighting Fixtures in Stadiums
Taking an example of LED lights for soccer field: if sports fixtures do not tackle the glaring power, then they will lead to glare harm from different angles and from many positions of the stadium. Players cannot see the moving football, but only a total strong light curtain which make them feel visually uncomfortable.
That is why our lights have an optical technology to control and restrict this glare, preventing it from leaking at the source.
Other Consideration of LED Sports Lighting
A. Football Stadium Lights Should NOT Have Stroboscopic Effect & Harm
Currently in football stadium lighting, what are mostly used are metal halides, bank lights, ordinary high power energy-saving lights. They have more or less a stroboscopic or flickering effect harm to a certain degree. There are some LED sports lighting fixtures in the market that we can’t look straight at. Because we can feel dazzled if we look for a while in that way. One of the differences between our lights and our competitors’ is that we apply anti-glare system to out lights. That means people don’t need to worry about feeling dazzled when playing a match under our lights.
B. The Lights Should Have Moderately High CRI
The principle of visual physiology reveals that light power and intensity causes effects to people’s eyes. Not only can they generate a sense of brightness in the visual perceptual system, but also they can create sense of color. Under photopic vision, bright feeling corresponds to intensity of light power. While color feeling corresponds to wavelength of light power. Many football stadium lighting projects have shown that under the same lux lighting level, stadiums with high CRI sports lighting fixtures have better lighting effects than those metal halides with low CRI. The mechanism is that spectrum energy of football lighting with improved CRI has scientific and reasonable distribution structure. When it shoots to the surface of moving balls, the reflected light bounces on the ball’s surface and the reality of color experiences much improvement. Thus, it generates stronger bright responses and colorful reactions.
C. High-efficiency LED Sports Lighting Fixtures
We should use high-efficiency sports lighting source and fixtures and low energy consumption accessories to improve the lighting power.
LED Stadium lighting and LED Sports Lighting should pursue a technical and economic goal which is to reach the brightest, clearest and the most comfortable illumination quality by using the most reasonable investment in lighting fixtures and the lowest lighting operation cost. It’s very important for energy-saving lighting to use logical illumination solution and high-efficiency LED sports lighting fixtures to lower circuit wastage and to control lighting better. Stadium lighting projects are usually high power consumption lighting projects. From the view of saving energy, it’s not a good solution to simply compare the initial investment rather than gauge a lighting solution based on designing the lowest operation cost.