Location: Driver Avenue, Moore Park, 2021
Client: Sydney Cricket & Sports Ground Trust
Lighting engineer: Ian Foy and Ken Douglas - Webb Australia
Electrical contractor: Ferret & Ives
Luminaire manufacturer/supplier: Sylvania Lighting Australasia
SLA Product: Siteco R2 Maxi 2000W Metal Halide Roto-symmetrical Floodlights
Sylvania Lighting Australasia’s state-of-the-art Siteco R2 Maxi 2kW Floodlights provided the ideal solution for the recent SCG refurbishment. The Sydney Cricket Ground represents an auspicious home for sporting in NSW and regularly hosts a variety of sporting events including, International Cricket and AFL matches.
Located in Moore Park, the grounds have recently undergone a number of changes including the construction of the 8,700 seat Victor Trumper Stand and a refurbishment to the existing lighting. Overcoming numerous challenges, the lighting upgrade recently won an Award of Commendation at the IES Lighting Design Awards — NSW Chapter.
The three stage installation faced many limitations, including utilising the pre-existing headframes to maintain the aesthetics of the 25-year-old columns. Providing an extensive brief, the Sydney Cricket & Sporting Ground Trust’s focus was to bring the current lighting up to international standards as well as reducing energy consumption.
Areas addressed in the brief included the need for flexible, multi level switching, enabling the client to select various levels of non-televised illumination ranging from professional training, 250 lux to two levels of non-televised competition - 500 and 700 lux. Additionally the brief touched on the need to maintain four of the existing columns whilst relocating two columns, to integrate with the construction of the new Victor Trumper Stand.
Considerations were also made to ensure compliance with the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations (FACT) Operational Practice documents for the High Definition lighting of televised sporting events for International Cricket and AFL matches. This included providing appropriate lighting requirements for the use of multiple main, secondary and slow motion cameras for two different types of sports.
Additionally, due to the close proximity of residential properties and main arterial roads to the venue, the installation was required to comply with the Obtrusive Lighting Code (AS4282) for the non-televised lighting presets ensuring the threshold requirements of the code were observed.
Due to their location and proximity to grandstand roof structure columns 2,3 and 4 presented line of sight issues for the floodlights on the bottom two rows of each of these three columns. Extensive studies were undertaken to ensure that with the additional grandstand roof mounted floodlights unwanted shadows that could be caused from a line of sight problem were eliminated. This solution ensured that the sixteen nominated camera locations received a maintained average of 1400 lux, compliant with the Australian Free TV operational guidelines.
By utilising 672 state-of-the-art Siteco R2 Maxi 2kW Metal Halide floodlights, Sylvania Lighting Australasia, supplied the client with the perfect solution. With excellent glare control and colour rendering suitable for television, the successful installation features the 6 iconic columns each fitted with 108 luminaires along with 24 roof-mounted floodlights.
Additionally all the new Siteco R2 Maxi floodlights and corresponding gear tray’s are numbered, with all gear trays located in the base of each column allowing for quick maintenance. Lamp replacement is via the rear of the floodlight without the need of tools or adjustment to aiming. The previous installation required alignment disruption with each lamp change.
Completed late 2008, although around 15 per cent extra floodlights are used to meet the demands of today’s high definition TV requirements the new lighting provides an approximate 30 per cent saving on energy consumption over the original installation and meets the requirements of the Sydney Cricket & Sports Ground Trust.
Sylvania Lighting Australasia, in partnership with Siteco, has provided the perfect lighting solution for players and spectators alike.
