This Sunday, the University of Phoenix becomes the first Super Bowl stadium in history to illuminate the game entirely with LED lights. The 63,400-seat stadium is home to the Arizona Cardinals, an NFL member of the Green Sports Alliance.
The Alliance is an organization encouraging the global sports industry to preserve natural resources and protect environmental space, species and communities.
To transform all lighting in the University of Phoenix stadium to LEDs is a big step towards a greener, more energy-efficient future. The energy savings accompanied by the use of LEDs over conventional metal halide lights are significant.
The system, which features Cree LEDs installed by Ephesus Lighting, uses 310,000 watts of energy. Previously, the stadium was using 1.24 million watts to power the old system. This is a 75 percent reduction in energy usage — a huge difference for such a large stadium.
Ephesus says the new LEDs will nearly double the lighting levels, even though the amount of fixtures was reduced from 780 to 312.
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There are also additional benefits beyond energy efficiency. LEDs cast a brighter and more uniform light, allowing video cameras on the sidelines to capture a sharper picture of the action with “greater field depth… and even offer more detailed slow motion replays.”
The Ephesus solution includes wired DMX controls on each fixture to interface with the control system. This enables the lights to be turned back on with the immediate touch of a button. Remember the 2013 Super Bowl blackout? LEDs don’t need a 20 minute warm-up period to come back on, so there won’t be a delay in game time in the case of a short power outage.
Watch how University of Phoenix Stadium made history with LED lighting:
