Aotea Electric Canterbury Servicing Division were approached back in October 2020 to provide a proposal to upgrade the original lighting around the Greyhound track in the centre of Addington raceway.
Aotea Electric Partnered with Radcliffe and Signify to assist with the design of upgrading the old Metal Halide flood lighting with new Philips LED fittings. The proposal included fitting 3 new 500W LED Flood light fittings on each of the original 28 poles to improve illuminance levels and consistency of lighting across the greyhound track.
Christchurch sunset and the new upgraded rectangular (bottom) LED lighting
As there weren’t any existing poles for the greyhound track on the main straight, the original methodology was to install additional poles for this section of the track, however, there was concern of obstruction of the view of the harness racing track, and the potential of shadowing on the harness track which could affect horses in a race.
Aotea Electric Canterbury, Signify, Christchurch Greyhounds, Active Electrical and Addington Raceway personnel collaborated to think outside the box and it was agreed to provide lighting on the home straight via 8 x 1800W LED flood light fittings mounted on the Metro stand roof. Shoutout to Graham van Tongeren, from Active Electrical, who was extremely helpful and accommodating in assisting us complete this project.
The Project Timed Around Racing Season
Once the quoting had been finalised, and client funding obtained, it was decided that the installation of the fittings would not take place until November / December 2022 to ensure racing could still operate without needing to use the greyhound track light fittings due to longer daylight hours.
Due to the busy greyhound and harness racing calendar, the only window to access the greyhound track to work was Wednesday and Thursday mornings.
The track maintenance teams were very understanding and accommodating to free the track up for us to enable us to get around all 28 poles to remove the old fittings and install the new as quickly as possible. The Aotea Electric project team consisting of : Dan Simpson, Chris White, Ali Wilson, Jan Buschi and Rowan Cleary worked efficiently using the Accessman hired cherry pickers off the sand track to access the fittings on each 3m pole.
Safely working at height with the help of Accessman hire
New rectangular lights, at the bottom, are aimed onto the main straight of the Greyhound track.
Aotea Electric Services
The Aotea Servicing team feel privileged to have been involved with this complex lighting upgrade project and would like to express our thanks to all involved to ensure this was a successful and painless project for the client and key stakeholders.