With Ephesus' new Lumadapt system, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Amalie Arena can buy new features for a single event. (Courtesy Ephesus Lighting)
When the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning started looking to upgrade their 7-year-old lighting system in Amalie Arena, something new in the world of lighting flickered to the top: an adaptive system.
New from Eaton’s Ephesus Lighting, the new Lumadapt LED Sports Lighting System offers a fully customizable sports lighting system that remotely updates, adapts and expands. And the folks in Tampa love it.
“This is taking (our lighting) to another level with brightness in venue and flexibility of the entire system,” said Steve Griggs, Lightning and Amalie Arena CEO. “It is a good investment not only as it relates to operational and energy efficiency but from a fan experience in venue and broadcast and game presentation. We are able to enhance the game presentation.”
The price of the system varies, but the installation that the Lightning have cost $600,000.
The fully integrated system can expand with a la carte options, whether expanded RGBA color, beam tuning, color-temperature tuning, remote status monitoring or a growing library of premade dynamic light scenes. As functionality updates and becomes available, customers can upgrade or update the system remotely.
“We saw the opportunity to go after a market that historically had a lighting technology that had little innovation,” said Mike Quijano, Ephesus director of business development. “We wanted a solution that could evolve and adapt along with the changes happening in the venue.”
After the 2012 deployment of the company’s first LED sports lighting system, the Lumadapt option that came online this fall not only updates fixture technology to provide a 20 percent more efficient system that could bring payback to an arena within two or three years, but it also comes with the ability to future-proof the system with updating. “We have taken what was a LED fixture,” Quijano said, “and brought it to the system level that allows upgradability and adaptability.”
Using a new power-supply technology, new LED lighting sources and a fresh control system that connects to cloud-based services, the Lumadapt also allows for venues to add existing features over time or for one-off events. For example, if a venue wants to purchase RGBA color and additional beam widths for a special event, they can buy by the hour, day, week, month or forever.
Amalie Arena installed the system in September. Both NYCB Live: Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., and the Budweiser Events Center in Loveland, Colo., will feature the system before the calendar turns to 2019. Ephesus plans to move into full production in 2019. Ephesus also plans a higher-output version for mid-2019 to fit outdoor solutions.
Quijano said the most excitement has come from arenas looking to fit the needs of varying events rolling through the building. He used an example of an ice hockey venue lit for hockey that also needs to annually host a televised tennis event. The tennis courts extend outside the hockey perimeter, so the venue can use the Lumadapt system to adjust the beam angle to the widest setting without having to rent supplemental lighting.
“Most arenas have two or three lighting systems,” he said. “We can accomplish everything in the arena with a single system. There are no extra fixtures you are purchasing. You are purchasing what you need and then leveraging the capability.”
Griggs said the Lightning appreciates the efficiency of the system — less heat output from the fixtures has improved their ability to keep the building cool and the ice pure for hockey games, especially in the challenging Florida weather conditions — but he really gets jazzed about the ability to offer a new fan experience.
“I would say playing with it, we have our templates, but we are going to become more adoptive with it, make it fully customized with what we want to do,” he said. “We can really change up what our theme nights look like and have the ability to change the lighting to set the building to that theme.”
The system can also integrate with the Daktronics scoreboard to further enhance fan experience and game presentation, whether pre-mood lighting for a concert, special gala event lighting or broadcast purity for coming NCAA basketball tournament events in 2019 and 2020. With only 45 of Amalie Arena’s 125 annual scheduled events being hockey, Griggs said they cared deeply about bright lighting, but especially about how the lighting fits with special events.
“We are excited,” Griggs said. “Ephesus has been true partners every step of the way. We have the keys to the car and have really started ramping it up.”