The FIFA 2010 World Cup saw a number of interesting lighting developments that made use of LEDs.
South African lighting sales and distribution company DWR supplied over 400 LED fixtures for a brand new installation at the HD hub of Supersport. Located in M-NET’s Studio 6 in Randburg, this was said to be the first of its kind in South Africa, employing eight Philips Vari-Lite VLX Wash luminaires, plus over 400 Anolis LED units which are integrated into various set elements in a design by Michael Gill. With environmental sustainability a key issue, the entire lighting rig can be run off just two 15 Amp plugs.
The Anolis LEDs – the majority of the 400 pieces are ArcLinks – were installed underneath selected floor panels and behind the back wall set pieces – which are finished with either glass or opal Perspex fronts. Together, these constitute 105 different sections or ‘light boxes’ all over the set, with each being individually controllable. The Anolis fixtures are all run from ArcPower transformers – five ArcPower 16 x 12s, which is a custom driver developed specially for this project by Anolis in the Czech Republic, and four x ArcPower 144s.
The VLX contains seven proprietary 120 W RGBW LED chipsets that provide output three times the efficiency of comparable tungsten sources and also features a homogenised light engine so the source is free of pixelation and LED ‘shadowing’.
Royal Philips Electronics installed new ArenaVision sports lighting systems at six of South Africa’s top sports stadia – Soccer City, Ellis Park, Royal Bafokeng, Moses Mabhida, Peter Mokaba and Nelson Mandela stadia – which now rank internationally with the best-lit sporting stadia.
ArenaVision sports lighting already equipped more than half of the world’s major football stadia, and the technology was further improved since the Germany World Cup. A new optic was developed that allows for 10% more light and fewer luminaires to be used, saving on costs, energy use and maintenance. With the new optical efficiency, the light distributed also has minimal spill light.
Lemnis Lighting, through its South African subsidiary Lemnis Lighting Africa, was selected by the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) in liaison with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Department of Energy, Department of Tourism, Central Energy Fund, Eskom and the Local Organising Committee, to be a key contributor in helping to offset the carbon emissions generated as a result of the FIFA 2010 World Cup. This initiative forms part of the DEA’s national greening program initiative and is linked to DEA programs such as the recently launched ‘National Greening’ brand.
Lemnis commenced the ’LED’s Kick Off’ programme, a large scale refitting of inefficient lighting with LED lighting in hotels, office buildings, households, on the streets and in rural areas. Part of the carbon credits generated as a result of this mass roll-out of LED lighting were retired and donated to the DEA to compensate the entire domestic carbon footprint of the World Cup 2010 event (estimated at 900 000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent).
The foundation of the program was laid at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December 2009 in discussions between the Ministers of Environment of South Africa and the Netherlands to find ways to address the urgency of tackling climate change. It follows Lemnis Lighting’s successful mass introduction of LED lighting in the Netherlands in cooperation with the Nationale Postcode Loterij (NPL) which was supported by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Lemnis’ range of Pharox LED products with high efficiency, the mesopic light concept for street lights and off-grid solar LED applications, were used for the programme. According to Lemnis, the products last five times longer than CFLs, do not contain harmful substances such as mercury, are recyclable, have a lifetime of up to 25 years and deliver a similar light experience while offering electricity savings of up to 90% compared to other light technologies.
From the indoor and outdoor lighting to the floodlights and from the lighting for catering establishments to the illumination of parking lots, Osram products such as high-intensity discharge lamps, T5 and T8 fluorescent lamps and LEDs were used in all of the stadia that hosted World Cup matches. Of all the components supplied, the LED-illuminated arc known as ‘The Arch’ was undoubtedly the highlight, featuring over 12 000 Golden DRAGON Plus LEDs and spanning the entire Durban stadium.
A total of 350 metres long, 2600 metric tonnes in weight and 30 stories high, the Arch’s illumination was provided by ‘LED Beams’ which OSRAM developed in collaboration with the local manufacturer BEKA especially to meet the demands of the stadium. Just under two metres in length, they are weatherproof and can be used flexibly. The installation and maintenance of the lighting components are carried out from a chamber inside The Arch.
Osram lamps were also used in the infrastructure sector, for instance to light the airports of Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town. Several suburban rail stations in Pretoria and Johannesburg and a 150 km long section of state road have also been equipped with Osram lamps.
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