Sustainable Sport Lighting Control

Lighting recreational sport areas can be tricky. After ensuring the optics are right and the light levels are correct, you then need to plan for when said light levels are needed.

When do you need the lighting to be on? For outdoor sports, the light points are usually pretty bright, right? For example, our Areaflood Pro luminaire reaches up to 100k lumen, so you won't want them to be on for longer than they need to be.

Although lighting control is a critical element in reducing our carbon footprint, there are two additional elements that are essential to balance as well.

The first is reducing light spill. There is an element of reflection that comes with high light output luminaires and this can be highly problematic for local biodiversity. For example, if you have community tennis courts that are set to a timer, then it's very possible that luminaires will be left on full power without the need for any illumination at all. This additional light pollution interrupts nocturnal biodiversity behaviors and disturbs our view of the night sky.

This leads us onto the second challenge. Communities close by to these outdoor sports facilities won't want to be affected by the long term use of high output luminaires. So we end up with three fixes coming from a single lighting control solution.

UrbaSens Play is a simple, app managed, Bluetooth lighting control system. You can set up different lighting behaviours to ensure the right light levels are used for the task at hand.

For example, if you have three five a side football pitches and only one is being used, then you can ensure that only the light points illuminating that pitch is switched on. Additionally, you can select the light output.

This means that if you are hosting a tournament, you may need the light points to be on full power across all pitches. However, for a training session, maybe it's just one court that needs 70% of the total illumination.

Also, as the light points will be controllable, via Bluetooth, through an app, then all settings are very easily adjusted and the lighting behavious communicated to all luminaires through a mesh network.