Lighting systems in stadiums

UEFA Euro 2008TM: lights, camera, action!

To ensure that their lighting systems benefit from an uninterruptible supply of power even in the event of a fault, stadium operators are relying on BENDER’s monitoring technology.

The Wörthersee Stadium, which was completed in September 2007 in Klagenfurt (in the Austrian province of Carinthia) and boasts 32,000 seats, was used for preliminary round matches at the 2008 European Championships, involving the German, Polish and Croatian national teams, amongst others. Michel Platini, President of UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations), was very impressed by the architecture of the Klagenfurt stadium during his visit there. But the technology behind this ultramodern arena is equally impressive.

The stadium’s plant operators chose a solution which works on the principle of “advanced warning prevents shutdown”. This is in order to ensure that, even if a fault occurs during a match as a result of fault currents, for example, the entire floodlight system will not be shut down, nor will all the lights in the stands go out. In the event of a fault, a message is sent to the building services management system via the CAN bus; this message is then displayed by the management system so that an engineer can take corrective action in a timely manner.

Specifically, 10 residual current monitors of the RCM420-D2 series, which continuously monitor the AC system with 140 kW power. 41 floodlight units, each of 2000 W, are connected to the system for lighting the pitch and TV screens alone. Another Euro 2008 stadium, Wals-Siezenheim, which was finished in 2003, has just under 19,000 seats and is home to “Red Bull Salzburg”, uses residual current monitors of the RCM470LY series to monitor its floodlight system.

Continuous residual current monitoring, plus the ability of the BENDER devices of the RCM series to locate faults and then to signal or display them quickly via the CAN bus, mean that operators can rest assured that matches will go off without a hitch – from a technical point of view, at least. A reliably well-lit pitch makes it easier for the players to put the ball in the back of the net.