, with millions of sparkling lights making up beautifully illuminated displays. Recently, the organisers have made a concerted effort to utilize only power-saving LED technology for their lighting designs.
Shear Display was the contractor responsible for the design and implementation of the installations along the Winter Festival of Light. One of the major elements of the Festival was a sound and light show on the exterior of the Toronto Power Generating Station - a majestic building adjacent to the Niagara River, fashioned in the Beaux-Arts style - which was illuminated by 75 IP65-rated Chroma-Q Color One 100 lighting fixtures.
Shear Display engaged the services of Toronto-based lighting company, Bartnes & Associates to oversee the lighting design, music creation, supply and maintenance for the project, which lit the power station for a three-month period.
"We recommended the 75 Color One 100s specifically for this event, choosing them because we required an IP65 fixture that could offer reliability for 12 weeks in open-air, unpredictable conditions right next to the Niagara Falls, as well as RGBA for superior colour-mixing from a compact unit", says Bartnes & Associates' Eric Bartnes. "We can gang so many together on a single circuit and rig them easily. We also love the power-in and out connectors, and the stainless steel data connections." The project was part of the Niagara Winter Festival of Lights event, which transforms the area around Niagara Falls into a palette of stunning colours
Having ceased operations in 1974, the Toronto Power Generating Station is 'dead' and therefore custom electrics had to be installed to power the Festival lighting.
"We had eight circuits of 120V on the building side and only two circuits for FOH, which was stationed in a trailer across the street from the building", explains Eric.
Ironically, the 'on at full power' energy consumption of the Color One LED units was only 50 Watts per fixture / a total of 3.75 kW for all 75 fixtures - in stark contrast to the Toronto Power Generating Station, which in its prime had a generating capacity of up to 102,500 kW.
"The power station's pillars provided a natural opportunity to uplight their surface, and we used custom concrete blocks with nuts embedded in the concrete for baseplates, upon which the 75 Color One 100 units were placed. We also designed a custom low-profile aluminium lighting tower to get some lights 20 feet in the air."
The Color One 100 light show ran automatically for seven hours per night, seven days a week, controlled by a Jands Vista console with a LumenRadio set-up to send signals across the road to the receivers. The Niagara Winter Festival of Lights kicked off in November 2015 and ran until the end of January 2016.
"The ice mist around Niagara Falls can be brutal, but the Color One 100s all performed!" Eric concludes.
(Jim Evans)
