Club Competition Level Netball Court LED Flood Lighting Case Example

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Netball Court Lighting System Requirements

The sporting club using these council owned netball courts undergoing refurbishment requested a minimum of average of 200 lux across two netball courts with the use of 4 lighting poles. This is a reasonably high level of light as for sports like netball the lighting needs to provide good visibility for players, competition judges, umpires and team officials so that they can clearly see everything that is going on in a fast moving game or training area, and so that the athletes can produce their best possible results.  

Based on some early calculations we recommended using two of our 480W medium beam LED Flood Lights LITE-BR-FL-480. These are a premium product with good efficiency and the oval shape of the medium size 60 x 100° beam is well suited to low pole/tower and smaller court applications such as netball and tennis courts or lawn bowls.

The electrical contractor felt the budget was sufficient for three of the LITE-BR-FL-480W LED flood lights per pole so the specification was altered with a prediction of > 300 lux average lighting over the court which is excellent and well above the level required for Netball Club Competition.

Challenges

There were two major challenges with this project, (i) the poles had already been poorly placed towards the end of each court making even lighting of the courts more difficult, and (ii) there was a concern regarding light spill due to the nearby neighbouring houses. 

Average Illumination Level

As shown in the diagram below on each court we were able to achieve an average luminance of 330 lux with a uniformity or min/avg = 0.62. Well above the target of minimum average of 200 lux. As mentioned we could have gotten away with 2 LED flood lights on each pole. 

This next diagram shows the good uniformity of the light distribution. Although as mentioned the uniformity could have been better had the poles been positioned closer to the centre of the court.

LED Light Spill (stray light)

Whilst we were not majorly concerned with lighting spill at an average of 200 lux and due to our ability to focus the majority of the LED light onto the court, the > 300 lux average level would be pushing the envelope and may present a challenge.

What is light spill? Light spill is not unique to LED lights and is not as much of a problem due to LED light sources being directional, unlike light bulbs or tubes, and due to the lens system used on LED lighting and the ability to focus and precisely distribute light more onto the intended area of lighting. Regardless any form of lighting will produce a scattering of light or stray light extending beyond the lighting area (i.e., the netball courts) towards areas where it is not intended to fall such as neighbouring houses.

Spill Light can be defined as “the light emitted by a lighting installation that falls outside the boundaries of a property or object to be lit and serves no purpose.”

There is also the issue of Light Glare but we do not need to address that here and will look at Glare in another case study.

The relevant Australian Standard for light spill and glare is AS 4282 - 1997 Control of the Obtrusive Effects of Outdoor Lighting. This standard provides guidance for develop1nent relative to property boundaries of existing buildings and for the locations of buildings within vacant properties. The standard sets out criteria related to the human experience of light and provides criteria for both pre-curfew hours and post-curfew hours where the curfew time is established by the relevant regulatory authority. The criteria for late night (post-curfew is typically after 2200 or 2300 hours) is considerably more restrictive.

Given the netball club will not be playing post-curfew hours we based the lighting design calculations on the pre-curfew standard which is less restrictive at a maximum allowable value of 10 lux.

Illuminance or Lighting Measurement

Illuminance is measured in two specific planes, horizontal and vertical. Horizontal plane measurements (Eh) receive light from all directions and the larger the angle of light to the normal of the surface the less the value of illuminance (proportional to the cosine of the angle). This is analogous to early morning or late afternoon sunlight in contrast to noon sunlight. Illuminance in a vertical plane (Ev) is usually higher in value than on the horizontal due to the typical orientation of LED flood lighting which makes vertical measurements important in light spill assessment. The added complication with a vertical plane is that it has to be in a specific direction. Light perpendicular to a surface will provide the highest illuminance values and therefore the Ev values need to be measured on the basis that the illuminance measurement faces directly towards the light sources and at a relevant height above the ground.

Therefore, in this netball court lighting case example we need to measure the light from the position of the houses facing the netball courts at a typical height of 1.5m above the ground (Ev).  

The lighting simulation indicated that with the above LED lighting layout on the netball courts and associated beam angles and court projection at approximately 50m from the court the vertical illuminance was still hovering around 10 lux which is higher than we would prefer.

Please check back soon to see how we solved this problem. 

To provide an update, this project which started in 2018 was since resolved using our Asymmetric Beam LED Flood Lights which unlike the symmetrical or rectangular beam flood lights can be mounted at 0° facing flat down towards the ground so as to reduce light spill and light glare. This is possible due to the asymmetric lens system which projects light forward and across the netball court. 

Our asymmetric beam netball and tennis court lights include the LITE-EL-TC and LITE-LUX-SP professional series flood lights, and LITE-SK-FLX Eco series flood lights.

The LITE-LUX-SP in particular is available in 480W, 960W and 1440W in a 25 x 130° beam angle enabling downward positioning at 0° and a reduction in light polution.

Please contact us for further information.