Blog
Previously we spotlighted opportunities that our provisional patent covers in the LED market for vertical agriculture. Today, we’ll explore how our CHS technology can be used for another application enabled by the provisional patent – high-intensity lighting for large installations and event stadiums.
Sports and events stadiums need a lot of power to create the experience that consumers love and are used to. According to Selectra, stadiums can consume up to 25,000 KWh during a 90-minute soccer (or as some would say, football) match – enough power to keep over a dozen homes lit for an entire year. Of this energy use, lighting accounts for almost 40% of the spend.
The tremendous amount of lighting-specific energy use within these facilities tends to be a direct result of the stringent requirements that many sports associations have for their lights. The NFL for example, requires 5,600K in correlated color temperature and 250 foot candles – in layman’s terms, these lights need to provide high-intensity and come close to the color of natural lighting. Another example is FIFA, which requires its pitches to be shadow and glare free with even lighting across the entire field. Sports associations want to give players and fans the best view of the event, and to do that takes a lot of lighting.
Recently, NFL stadiums have been driving the charge on introducing LED lighting to cut electricity costs up to 75% and pad their bottom line, but current generation LEDs have their setbacks for these types of applications. The high intensity needed to increase output in stadiums can wear on the LED, creating a shorter lifespan if it isn’t designed in such a way to prevent overheating.
Coretec’s CHS technology creates silicon quantum dots (Si-QDs), a critical component for next generation stadium-grade LEDs. With these Si-QDs, LEDs will be able to offer an increased number of lumens, better known as light output, without increasing the amount of heat they give off. This is immensely helpful for lighting large areas, including stadiums, where managing the extra heat that high-power and high-intensity lighting generates could either be dangerous or require additional cost to manage cooling.
The use of CHS technology for Si-QDs will also cut down on the amount of overall electricity that stadium lighting will use, allowing them to benefit from the 75% electricity savings. This will obviously be an attractive feature for stadium owners as one of their most consistent costs is lighting the entire structure during events.
The LED industry continues to innovate and must do so to remain competitive. Coretec’s new material technology capabilities are making LEDs as innovative as they ever have been and our CHS-derived technology is at the forefront of expanding the use of high-powered stadium lighting.