Sometimes, even in today’s IoT era, lighting is all about lighting. That’s the case at the world’s largest cricket stadium — in Ahmedabad, India — where Signify has provided 580 rooftop luminaires to support nighttime action and high-definition broadcasting.
The lights will go live for games later this year at the brand new 110,000-seat Sardar Patel Stadium, commonly known as Motera Stadium for the neighborhood where the stadium stands in Ahmedabad, the largest city in the western state of Gujarat.
Signify completed the installation in January as a subcontractor to Larsen & Toubro, a Mumbai-based construction firm with Danish heritage. Larsen & Toubro built the grounds for the Gujarat Cricket Association, replacing the former Motera Stadium which was lit by metal halides and demolished in 2015.
The lighting makes the stadium the first cricket arena in India to meet broadcasting standards set by the International Cricket Council (ICC), according to Sumit Padmakar Joshi, market leader for Signify’s operations in India. The Dubai-based ICC is the sport’s global governing body.
“At the same time, it will help the stadium in achieving its responsible and environmental goals enabling durability through longevity and significantly reduce maintenance costs,” he said.
Signify declined to reveal how much the lighting cost.
But while the Philips ArenaVision floodlights will illuminate the field, don’t look for any of the fancy color- and scene-changing LED lighting that often goes along with modern stadium lighting projects, such as at Toyota Stadium in Japan, also lit by Signify.
Such venues often use Internet-connected controls networking technology to embellish the fan experience — Signify offers a product called Interact Sports for such purposes — and typically also use centrally-controlled LED scenes for outside façade lighting.
A Signify spokesperson told LEDs Magazine that the Motera lighting installation is strictly for field illumination. The spokesperson did not elaborate. Signify managed to install and position the ArenaVision luminaires without using the robotic carts it has deployed in some instances, such as at Toyota as well as at Japan’s Kobe Stadium.
The stadium lights are powered via standard electricity cabling, not by Power over Ethernet, which is emerging as both an electricity and data conduit on some lighting jobs.
The Motera facilities include two cricket grounds, a cricket academy, an Olympic size swimming pool, a gymnasium, and 75 corporate boxes.
The stadium hosted the Namaste, Trump (Welcome, Trump) rally focused on US President Donald Trump and India’s prime minister Narendra Modi last month.
MARK HALPER is a contributing editor for LEDs Magazine, and an energy, technology, and business journalist ([email protected]).
Mark Halper | Contributing Editor, LEDs Magazine, and Business/Energy/Technology Journalist
Mark Halper is a freelance business, technology, and science journalist who covers everything from media moguls to subatomic particles. Halper has written from locations around the world for TIME Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian, CBS, Wired, and many others. A US citizen living in Britain, he cut his journalism teeth cutting and pasting copy for an English-language daily newspaper in Mexico City. Halper has a BA in history from Cornell University.
