FAU's new on-campus football stadium will be lit by 160 individial Qualite bulbs.
Lights for camera action
In this week's installment of our series highlighting various features of FAU's new on-campus stadium week we examine the overhead lights, which are designed to make the stadium shine brightly on high definition television.
Originally published on
6/27/2011
by
Chuck King
The lights at FAU's new on-campus stadium are intended to do more than simply keep the players from chasing footballs in the dark.
This lighting system is designed to ensure the players, the game and the stadium maximize brightness for television broadcasts.
“It's a lighting system designed for ESPN-type coverage of night college football games,” said Pat Kinney, Vice President of Hunter Knepshield, the retailer that sold FAU the lighting package. “They've given us all the camera positions and the camera angels and we are able to predict the amount of light the camera will see.”
FAU's stadium will vanquish the darkness from football nights with the 2000 International Series from Qualite, a company that recently lit Palm Beach International Raceway and has provided the lighting for Stetson's soccer field, Florida State's baseball field and Kennesaw State's football field.
A different, less expensive Qualite system was installed more than two decades ago to light FAU's baseball stadium.
Kinney said the lighting system is typical for newer football stadiums. It's comprised of a total of 160 lights, clustered in eight different positions - six on stand-alone posts and two banks atop the press box tower. The lights are positioned to allow beams to cover the field, providing even lighting across area.
“Nowadays, it's high definition and they want to be able to see the beads of sweat coming down a persons face,” Kinney said. “It will look good for the spectators and the players, but it will look really good for the cameras, too.”
Installation of the lights began in late April and took about a month to complete.
The base of each light pole required a seven-foot wide hole to be dug 40 feet into the ground, allowing the pole to be cemented into place. The top of the lights mounted on the six poles stand 130 feet above the field, with the two atop the press box tower being 15 feet higher.
“I was a little nervous about how we were going to get the ground preparation part of that done with the proximity of other activities, but it went very smoothly,” said John Church, senior project manager for James A. Cummings, which is teaming with Balfour Beatty to construct the stadium.
The lights were assembled in Qualite's Hillsdale, Michigan plant. A computer program dictated each light's positioning before being affixed to their support.
Once the power is turned on to the lights, which should happen mid-July, they will be tested again with light meters to make sure they produce the desired light level throughout the stadium.
“We are going to throw the switch one of these days and it's going to light up like you see in the movies,” said Jeff Emerson, senior project manager of Hypower, the company handling the electrical portion of the stadium project. “To me it's the coolest part of the electrical work that we have going on.”
The lights and poles cost just shy of half a million dollars, with the installation adding another couple hundred thousand dollars to the project, Emerson said.
“It wasn't anything other than we knew we needed lights and we needed to make sure we got in the right level of lighting,” FAU athletic director Craig Angelos said. “I asked (sports information director Katrina McCormack) to contact ESPN to find out what they needed in order to broadcast games on television without having to bring in other lighting.”