Friday 30 May 2014

Indoor Tennis Court Lighting

I’ve recently come across a rather novel way of lighting indoor courts which I think worth sharing as it is very effective and very cost effective.

I was asked to quote to replace the lighting on an indoor tennis court.  Simple enough, but the current arrangement was rather unusual.  It was lit with 4x6ft fluorescent fittings the entire length of the court on both sides located more or less at 6m directly above the doubles side lines. (off the playing area) They were angled at about 30deg from vertical.

One solution is obviously to simply replace the tubes with LED but this would mean rewiring each fitting and cleaning the diffusers.

I considered a different approach and modelled the court with our Turin 600x600 suspended ceiling panel and was amazed at the result.

Good overall illumination and uniformity, minimal glare and, since these panels are solid, unlike the fluorescent fittings, they are robust and less prone to damage from mis-hit balls.


 Of course it's not just indoor tennis you can light this way.  Bowling greens, squash, badminton - anything where glare would be an issue.

If you have something you need lit - give us the challenge to come up with something different

Saturday 10 May 2014

Daylight Harvesting with Earlsmann LED Lighting

Daylight harvesting is a technique that is becoming popular as a very good way to keep energy usage to a minimum.  Why pay to run your lighting when the sun can provide all the light you need?  How often do you go into an office and discover the lights are on and the sun is blazing outside.  In fact, you may not actually notice the lights are on the sun is so bright!

All you need to do is turn the lights off to make immediate savings but that (almost) never happens.

A good starting point is a motion sensor as they will turn the lights off for you when nobody is about but this has its own problems as it can quite often be much gloomier at desks farthest from the window.  The solution, of course, is daylight harvesting sensors to maintain a constant lux.  These continuously monitor the amount of light falling on the work surface and adjust the light output from the luminaire accordingly to keep it to the required level.  These can be incorporated in the luminaire so those sitting closest to the window where daylight could easily be 700 or 800 lux would have minimal artificial light whilst those sitting with, perhaps, only 100 lux from daylight can have it boosted to 300 lux or more, as desired, by the luminaire.

With modern controls and LED luminaires this is very easy to achieve.  The initial investment in controls is slightly higher than for fittings without but the payback time is similar and the ongoing savings far greater.

Constant Lux with Brighton LED Bay light

In the picture above we used our 120 Watt Brighton LED bay light to achieve around 700 lux


If you’d like to know more, or to discuss your own requirements, please get in touch.