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Sports facilities – Helvar goes for gold at Newham IAC

The lighting at Newham IAC needed to be carefully planned to cater for a myriad of sports and a number of different users. TFA look at the controls solution.

The lighting at Newham IAC needed to be carefully planned to cater for a myriad of sports and a number of different users. TFA look at the controls solution.

A full Helvar DIGIDIM system has recently been installed at Newham IAC, a brand new indoor sports arena, built with the 2012 Olympics in mind The comprehensive system allows the centre management, the neighbouring school (who share the use of the facilities) and local athletics clubs to effectively manage the lighting for maximum benefit for users while ensuring energy savings are made when possible.

Newham IAC houses an athletics training hall with a ten lane 80m track, high jump, long jump and pole vault and three courts for basketball/football, six badminton courts, six cricket nets, coach education room, school fitness centre, outdoor mini soccer pitches and an outdoor stand. To guarantee maximum use and enjoyment of the facility, the lighting installation needed to be carefully planned. Helvar teamed up with the lighting manufacturer, Glamox and the electrical services department of Newham Council to design the scheme. “Helvar were a great project partner,” says Peter Mordey of Glamox. “Their input was invaluable in designing and commissioning the lighting control scheme.”@page_break@

Of key importance was the ability to balance functional lighting – so that all sports could be played safely and in comfort – with the need to conserve energy wherever possible. For this reason a DIGIDIM system was specified to manage light levels and introduce lighting flexibility into the games hall.

The Centre is used by the school during the day, the community in the evenings and by local sports clubs at weekends, both day and night. The intelligent DIGIDIM control system achieves the extra energy saving and flexibility by being able to dim the lights (or turn them off altogether) in areas when not in use. The Glamox fittings are fitted with Helvar DALI ballasts to facilitate this feature.

According to Colin Price of Newham Council this feature was a key to achieving the lighting design goals: “We knew that the Centre would be open all hours with various areas being in use at any one time. What was obvious is that there would be times – for example badminton matches during the evening – when a large percentage of the Centre would be empty. From our point of view it would have been unacceptable to have all the lights on if just one area was in use. This was where the Helvar partnership came in. We were able to design a system that could easily isolate the lighting in certain areas and lower or raise light levels to suit at other times. We’re delighted with the result.” @page_break@

In effect the whole Centre has been divided into separate lighting zones with each zone being controlled individually. Each area represents a particular sport whether badminton court, running track or cricket area. Each area has preset lighting scenes which can also be overridden for individual operation. The different scenes and group settings are recalled by using the Helvar 924 touchpanel which allows the Centre staff to easily switch between zones and scenes to match the booking arrangements of the Centre.

The Helvar lighting control system features four 910 DIGIDIM Routers, a 924 Touchpanel to combine with the Glamox luminaires fitted with DALI ballasts. The installation was completed with Helvar’s Designer Software complete with an Emergency Test function.

www.helvar.com
www.glamox.co.uk