LEDs light more baseball venues for 2018 MLB season

Musco Lighting has announced a number of new LED sports-field lighting projects in time for what was the earliest full-league start — on Mar. 29 — to a Major League Baseball (MLB) season. MLB ballparks in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Kansas City have new SSL systems for the playing surface that should provide a superior visual experience for players, fans in the stands, and TV viewers at home. Moreover, the Estadio de Béisbol Monterrey hosts a three-game May series between the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers under new LED stadium lighting in Monterrey, Mexico.

Professional sports teams have long eyed LED lighting for their playing fields and courts because of the potential energy savings and the high electricity costs associated with lighting playing venues. Early on, however, LEDs proved too costly for such applications and also could not match the quality of legacy high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting. Ironically, LEDs are now thought to provide superior light quality and that fact often trumps energy costs as the reason that teams move to SSL.

Consider the famed Chelsea Football Club (FC) of the English Premier League. It was all the way back in 2014 when we covered the retrofit of Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium to LEDs with the motivation being to improve the TV viewing experience (http://bit.ly/2J0Ci1E). And the National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl games have been played under LEDs going back to early 2015 (http://bit.ly/2IXS9hg).