Best Golf Course Lighting & LED Driving Range Lights
Golf course lighting is compulsory for players, audiences and broadcasting when having night golf play. Our LED driving range lighting system is suitable for outdoor lawn field because of its high durability, energy efficiency and light-weight structure. Our floodlights have high lighting efficiency of 140 lm/W, which saves 75% energy after replacing the metal halide, mercury vapor or HPS lamps in your driving range. They are also waterproof, so they work under the bad weathers.
Besides, we also need bright driving range lighting for night practice. Since there are different sizes, shapes and lighting standards, we offer customized lighting design for all indoor or outdoor golf course and driving range in order to provide you with the best lighting solution that fits your needs.
In this page, you can find all information on how to light a golf range by LED.
Lighting Design of Golf Driving Range
Proper lighting plan is essential to maintain an adequate brightness level and uniformity standard inside the driving range. Let’s explore how to achieve the best lighting for your project.
1. Lux (Brightness) Standard of Golf Course Lighting
How bright the golf course should be? For the recreational and training driving range, the ground lux level should have 200 to 300 lux. This brightness level allows the golfers and spectators to see the golf trajectory clearly. If the field is professional, says it is designed to host the international tournaments such as US Open, Travelers Championship, and so on, the lighting level will reach up to 800 to 1200 lux!
There are two types of illumination says, horizontal and vertical. Horizontal means the lighting on the ground (the golf lawn), while vertical represents the face and body of golfers. The ratio between horizontal and vertical should be closed to 1. Our lighting designers and engineers are proficient in prepare golf course lighting plan that satisfied both professional and recreational requirement. Please feel free to contact us to get the lighting opinion today.
2. Uniformity Level of Driving Range Lights
High uniformity means the overall brightness level is more or less the same. Poor uniformity will cause eye aching and fatigue because we need adopt the bright and dim lights constantly. It is quantified to a 0 to 1 (max) scale. “1” means the lux level in every spot on the golf court has the same brightness.
For the putting green areas, it is recommended to have at least 0.5 uniformity, which means the minimum to maximum lumens ratio (U1) or minimum to average (U2) is 0.5. For the top-class tournament, sometimes up to 0.7 illuminance uniformity is required.
3. Flicker-free Lighting is Required
The maximum speed of golf ball can reach >200 mph. The motion of golf clubs and balls are captured by high-speed camera. If the lights flicker under the camera, the spectators will miss the exciting moment.
Our flood lighting for golf course is compatible to 5000 to 6000 fps slow motion video. The flickering rate is about 0.3%, which means the fluctuation of the lumen output is 0.3%, which is not observable in both naked eyes and camera.
4. Color Temperature
For the professional tournament, it should have about 5000K white light. On the contrary, if you own a community golf club or recreational driving range, both warm and white lights are applicable. Our lighting system of golf range has a wide range of color temperature from 2800 to 7500K. Contact us to customize your lights.
5. Photometric Analysis of the Floodlights System
DIALux and RELUX are the useful tools to create lighting simulation report. Our engineers will create the scene and then add the lighting fixtures inside the golf course. It involves the selection of power and beam angle of different LED flood lights. We can always come up with the ideal lighting system – reducing the power consumption while achieving the bright and uniform illumination.
6. Lighting for Starting Area & Cart Parking Areas
The starting area is a place where the golfers can pick up the equipment such as the club and golf cart. Especially for the night practice, the roadway of driving range should have adequate lighting to guide their ways.
Why LED Lighting for Golf Course?
1. LED is More Energy-efficient than Other Light Sources
The conventional lights such as metal halide and mercury vapor lamps are less energy efficiency and durable, as they turn about 60 to 75% energy into heat waste. Nonetheless, LED is a contemporary light source that turns 95% energy directly into light energy – only negligible amount of heat loss. This is the reason why there are more people replacing their golf driving range lights to LED.
2. LED has Over 30 Years Life Span
LED is 10 times more long-lasting than metal halide or halogen flood lights. If you use the LED for 6 to 7 hours per night, they can light up your golf practice area for more than 30 years! It is the major incentive of the replacement of golf course lights as you can save the lamp cost, as well as the repair & re-installation labor cost.
3. Lightning Issue Inside Golf Course
As the golf range is usually empty, and there are few buildings next to it. Thunderstorm is a potential danger to the golfers. Our high mast golf course lighting system is compatible to lightning protection module. The high voltage lightning strike will not damage the lights. Contact our engineers for more support and customization options.
Cost of Driving Range Lighting
Apart from the lamp cost, we need to consider the running cost as well. That is why you can eventually save money in the long run by replacing the metal halide, HPS, halogen and mercury vapor with LED lights inside golf course.
1. How Much Does it Cost to Run the Golf Course Lighting?
What is the running cost of the golf driving range lights? It depends on the size and standard of your course. For a typical recreational 18-hole golf club, it requires around 200 lux. If the size is 6000 square yard (~5000 square meter) turf, we need 200 lux * 5000 = 1,000,000 lumen. Since our LED has 140 lumens per watt, the total power required is around 7000 watt. In fact, this figure indicates the minimum, theoretical power required. You can get a more detailed results by contacting our lighting engineers.
Then, since the average electricity cost in US is $0.12 kW/h. The electricity cost (running cost) of golf course = 7000W * 6 hours per day * $0.12 / 1000 = $5.04 daily, or $150 monthly, or $1840 annually. It is the cost of running the driving range LED lights, if the existing lighting system is metal halide, we need 3 times more power, and hence the electricity cost.
2. How much Does Golf Course Lighting Cost?
It is true that LED is more expensive than the traditional lights such as metal halide and HPS. If you are going to replace all the lights at once to LED, it would cost around US$5000 to $20000 per 18-hole golf course. The price is up to different companies. LedsMaster is offering quality, reliable yet affordable sports floodlights. Contact us for price quote and lighting opinion today.
Our contact email: beatus@ledsmaster.com