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Hi-Tech Stadium Lights Up with Metal Halides

Jun 1, 2000 12:00 PM, By Ellen Parson

Unique baseball arena, featuring high-technology metal halide lighting, generates revenue and stimulates business development for downtown Phoenix.

Today, major league baseball teams compete in modern arenas built on a scale equal to the ancient coliseums. Spectators can choose seats ranging from luxury boxes to basic benches and dine on cuisine of all ethnic varieties. An electronically updated scoreboard records hits, runs, and outs. And now that modern metal halide lighting systems can simulate natural daylight conditions, night games are a regular feature of the baseball season.

In addition to pure sports entertainment, these elaborate baseball stadiums also serve as major tourist attractions. Therefore, more and more city planners are incorporating them into their overall strategy for revitalizing downtown areas, generating revenue, and stimulating business development.

To light up these night games, the stadium developers of Bank One Stadium in Phoenix chose metal halide lighting supplied by Venture Lighting International, Cleveland, Ohio. Because this type of light source produces high levels of illuminance without creating glare and reproduces colors with great accuracy, designers choose metal halide lights for most sports lighting applications; particularly baseball because it requires such a large playing area.

The compact size of metal halide lamps allows you to direct light where it's needed, and they produce more dramatic lighting effects. These characteristics are not only important to provide comfortable, clear viewing for spectators, but they also create the right conditions for television broadcasting. Furthermore, metal halide lamps drastically reduce heat generation and are suited for both indoor and outdoor applications.

Bank One Ballpark incorporates more than 850 1500W metal halide sports lamps. The higher lumen output of these lamps enabled developers to design the ballpark more cost effectively with fewer fixtures to achieve the high design light levels baseball requires. The Venture Instant Restart metal halide lamps include a special high-voltage igniter that operates as an add-on to a standard ballast so lamps restart instantaneously in a hot mode after any power interruption.

Hubbell Lighting Inc., Christiansburg, Va., supplied luminaires for the lamps. These fixtures, along with the high output and efficiency of metal halide lamps, result in lower installation, maintenance, and energy costs for the Bank One Ballpark. Moreover, the SL fixture ballast housing is rated to operate effectively in 100 degree F temperatures.

Thanks to the new metal halide lighting, the city skyline is brighter, and the area surrounding the ballpark is safer and more attractive.

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