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Quality of Light: How to get the light level you need and maintain it
Determine Appropriate Quality of Light
Light on a field is measured in footcandles. The sport type, skill level, field size, spectator capacity, and any television broadcast or video requirements determine the number of footcandles required to light your field. For example, baseball uses a small ball traveling at high speeds and, therefore, requires a higher light level than soccer.
There are industry standards for sports lighting available from the Illumination Engineering Society or from your lighting manufacturer.
Ensure Quality of Light
The quality of light on the field is known as uniformity, or evenness, of light on the field. It is stated as a ratio, like 3:1, the minimum standard for most sports. That ratio means that the brightest spot on the field should be no more than three times as bright as the darkest point. Uniformity is important because balls appear to change speeds if they pass from dark to light areas, making it difficult to follow the flight and gauge the speed of the ball.
Maintaining Quantity and Quality
Light levels naturally depreciate over time as lamps age. By using a series of automatic power adjustments, a lighting system is able to provide "constant light levels" and greatly extend the life of the lamps. These automatic power adjustments apply more power to the luminaire as depreciation occurs, thus maintaining the target light level. With these power adjustments, full power is applied only at the end of the lamp's useful life, which saves energy over the life of the lamp.
Typical floodlighting equipment without the depreciation control mechanism relies on frequent lamp replacements to maintain target light levels.
With Musco's Light-Structure Green™, average Constant Light™ levels are guaranteed for the life of your system. To learn more about maintaining your quantity and quality of light, click here.
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