LED leg-up for ‘The Miners’ home turf

Article posted by Coliseum, August 2^nd, 2021

Image: Rhenac

RHENAC SPORTS LED, part of RHENAC GreenTec AG, has put the fully automatic CLS-LED turf lighting system into operation at Schalke O4’s home – Veltins-Arena – in Germany.

The 62,271-capacity Arena AufSchalke, currently known as Veltins-Arena for sponsorship reasons, is an indoor football stadium in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It opened on August 13^th, 2001, as the new home ground for Bundesliga club FC Schalke 04.

Schalke 04, or abbreviated as S04, is a professional German football and multisports club originally from the Schalke district of Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia. The ‘04’ in the club’s name derives from its formation in 1904.

‘RHENAC SPORTS LED’ stated that in modern football stadia, the regular supply of additional light is indispensable for maintaining the quality of the pitch. An intact pitch not only minimizes the risk of injury, but also influences the passing accuracy, ball speed, jump height, and stability of the players. In order to optimize the care of the turf, RHENAC GreenTec AG has therefore developed the CLS (Complete Light Spectrum) light technology and elaborated it in the fully automatic turf lighting system R-BL-1750, which has now been put into operation at FC Schalke 04’s Veltins-Arena after a two-year project period. The R-BL-1750 can supply the football turf with CLS-LED growth light for regeneration all year round. If required, irrigation and nutrient supply is also possible.

Second to none

‘RHENAC SPORTS LED’ further stated that the system is equipped with various sensors that record the condition of the turf and environmental influences and make them available for evaluation in a digital logbook. The sensors record all parameters that are important for lawn growth, such as heat requirements, nutrient saturation, soil moisture and temperature, and the ambient climate. The evaluated data shows the user which stress factors should be reduced.

After evaluating this data, the CLS control system can provide the grass with individual light spectra, appropriate light intensity and infrared heat, automatically or according to the greenkeeper’s specifications. Lawn development can be controlled specifically and zone-wise, as there are various care programs for length growth, leaf branching, root optimization, lawn drying, prevention of fungal diseases, and others. The programs are constantly being expanded in cooperation with the Technical University of Munich. Boost functions for faster regeneration or anti-stress programs round off the functions.

The R-BL 1,750 consists of a steel main beam with a span of more than 80 meters, which can be moved along the lawn on rails at a speed of more than 12 m/min. Twelve folding B-beams and six continuously adjustable C-beams, equipped with approximately 1,400 LED lighting modules and a total of more than 100,000 Osram LED luminaires, can illuminate a total of 1,750 m² simultaneously. The entire installation can also be infinitely lifted from its lowest operating position of 1.50 m to a maximum of 4.65 m, allowing buses to pass underneath. Two 2-section R-BL-1,750 plants were built for the entire field, which can regenerate a total of 3,500 m² of turf simultaneously.

The R-BL can create the conditions for the regeneration and growth of sports turf 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The system is modular and can be adapted to the customer’s wishes.

The R-BL not only optimizes the care of the turf, but also reduces operating costs by using energy-efficient LED lights in comparison to conventional lighting systems. Embedded in the stadium’s building management system, it can also help optimize the use of heating and cooling systems around turf maintenance.

Technical data:

Approximately 190 tonnes total weight – distributed over two subsystems;
Integrated hydraulics lift the system into its parking position at a height of over 4.60 m;
Two main beams with a span of > 80 m each;
Twenty-four automatically retractable B-beams;
Sixty LED light beams – individually movable in the axis – parked under the main beam;
Two thousand seven hundred and fifty-five LED light modules with individually adjustable light formulas;
More than 200,000 OSRAM LEDs installed in the 2,755 light modules;
Four hundred and twenty IR heating systems; and
More than 100 digital actuators.

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