Lights On After Dark: Solar Lighting for Bowls Clubs, Racetracks, Tennis Courts and Car Parks

With daylight saving back and the summer sporting calendar in full swing, community venues across Australia are getting busier after dark. Twilight tennis competitions, pennant bowls, race meetings and training sessions all run on past sunset, and the car parks that serve them stay full long after the last ball is bowled.

For clubs, councils and the electricians who look after them, that raises the same question every year: how do we light this space properly without blowing the budget?

The hidden cost of lighting a venue

Lighting a green, court or car park the traditional way is rarely just the cost of the lights. Cable has to be trenched across playing surfaces and car parks, switchboards often need upgrading to carry the extra load, and once the job is finished the venue pays for every hour the lights are on. For a volunteer committee or a council working to a capital works budget, those extra costs can stall a project for years.

Solar lighting changes the maths. Each pole carries its own panel, battery and controller, so it generates and stores its own energy during the day and runs independently at night. There is no cable to trench, no switchboard to upgrade and no nightly power bill. Poles can go exactly where the light is needed, not just where the power can reach.

Lawn bowls: even light across the whole green

Bowlers need to read the head from the mat, which means light that is even across the green and low in glare. Patchy lighting creates bright spots and dark corners that make it hard to judge weight and line, and harsh glare can be worse than no light at all.

A standard bowling green has a similar footprint to a three court tennis block, which makes it well suited to the same approach Plusrite uses for courts: ORCA-200W solar floodlights on 8 metre poles placed around the perimeter, each aimed to overlap its neighbours so the whole surface is evenly covered. Because each pole is self powered, nothing needs to be trenched through the turf or around the ditch. Clubs can also model the green against the lighting targets their association asks for, as outdoor bowling greens are covered by their own part of the AS 2560 sports lighting series.

Horse and dog racing: keeping race nights running

Racetracks place huge demands on their lighting. The main towers that light the racing surface typically run high output fittings that need to be kept in top condition, and when a single lamp fails it is rarely practical to replace a whole bank.

This is where Plusrite’s range covers both sides of the venue. For existing towers, our LED floodlights and range of HID globes, including metal halide and high pressure sodium, keep fittings running without unnecessary capital expenditure. Around the track, solar lights take care of the areas that are often forgotten until someone trips in the dark: stalls and kennels, float and trailer parking, walkways, gates and access roads. These are exactly the spaces where trenching new power is expensive and disruptive, and where a self contained solar light makes the most sense.

Tennis courts: a real three court design

Plusrite recently prepared a lighting concept for a three court block at a local tennis club. The design uses 20 ORCA-200W solar floodlight units, a total of 40 lights, mounted on 14 poles of 8 metres. Twelve perimeter poles each carry one ORCA unit, while the two poles on the net lines between courts carry four units each, with eight floods fanned to light the courts on either side.

The calculated result averages 384 lux across the playing lines of all three courts, comfortably above the 300 lux target, with a uniformity of 0.68. Every court was modelled point by point from the luminaire’s measured photometric file, then turned into a night render so the club could see exactly how the courts would look before committing to the project.

Car parks: smart light that responds to people

Car parks need reliable light for safety, but they are often empty for long stretches of the night. The Dolphin smart solar street light is designed for exactly this. Each head delivers around 8,000 lumens from a 40 watt LED array, and its Smart Detect motion sensor idles the light at 30% until a person or vehicle approaches, then returns it to full output. That saves stored energy for when it is actually needed.

For a regional council car park, Plusrite designed a layout of 12 Dolphin-40W heads on five new 8 metre hinged poles, using twin and four way adaptors so each pole lights the bays around it. The simulation showed an average of 18.6 lux across the car park, with 97% of the area at or above 7 lux, meeting the PC1 subcategory for high night-time use in AS/NZS 1158.3.1 at full output.

Beyond the venue: roads and intersections

The same thinking applies to the roads leading to a venue. For a rural intersection on a regional road, six ORCA 100W solar street lights on 8.5 metre slip base poles create a continuous band of light across 248 metres of road. A 4G controller runs them at full output for the first four hours after dusk, then at 50% until sunrise, and each light carries enough battery for 60 to 80 hours of autonomy.

See it before you build it

Every one of these projects started the same way: with a site plan or an aerial screenshot. From there, the Plusrite team works out pole positions, mounting heights and aiming angles, calculates the lux levels across the site, and produces a night render that shows what the finished project will look like. It means committees, councils and contractors can make decisions with confidence, and electricians arrive on site with the layout already worked out.

Getting started

Whether you are a club committee planning a lighting upgrade, an electrician quoting on a sports or car park job, a wholesaler supplying the trade, or a council officer scoping a capital works project, Plusrite can help. Send us a site plan or an aerial screenshot of your green, track, court or car park and we will come back with a lighting layout and a quote. Contact the Plusrite Australia team on 03 9708 2552, email sales@plusrite.com.au or visit plusrite.com.au to get started.