Arcola Theatre launched 7 of its new HyLight fuel cell powered lighting systems
across the Latitude Festival site; providing lighting for everything from marquees, to
forest performances to toilets, as well as powering laptops, phone chargers and
ticket machines.
HyLight is the first fuel cell product to be developed specifically for the events
industry and offers the high reliability demanded through an onboard ‘brain’ which
monitors performance and seamlessly switches to battery back-up in case of fault or
user error.
Running on hydrogen, with a run time of 50 hours between refills, the system
produces zero emissions and is almost silent. Carbon emission reductions of up to
60% are likely in performance settings through use of the latest LED lighting. The
system is also perfect for safety and security lighting where emission reductions of
up to 90% are possible by displacing the ubiquitous 500W garage floodlight with
15W LED alternatives.
Arcola developed HyLight with a consortium including regular partners - hydrogen
gas producer BOC and leading events industry supplier White Light. A new partner is
Horizon Fuel Cell, manufacturer of the fuel cell at the heart of HyLight. A family of
larger HyLight products is now planned, built around Horizon’s extensive range of
low cost, light weight fuel cell systems.
Complementing Hylight, at a larger scale, and building on its success of the past 2
years, Arcola once again provided low energy lighting and fuel cell power to the
theatre stage with their remit expanded this year to provide sound as well.
Executive Director Dr Ben Todd, said “we have gained quite a good understanding of
what is possible in lighting, helped by rapidly evolving technology and a growing
enthusiasm across the industry, there has been much less attention given to low
energy approaches to sound however so we are delighted to this year make some
first steps”.
Arcola Theatre Production Company, Company Number: 5242988, Charity Number: 1108613
To ensure that there was no compromise in quality, Arcola enlisted Steve Mayo,
head of sound at the Barbican and a new industry partner Dobson Sound. “In these
early stages our focus is on cutting energy consumption by two means – first by
getting the right amount of sound in the right place, hence the skilled system
designer, and second by improving system efficiency by using amplifiers employing
pulse-width-modulation (D class) which use nearly 50% less power than a
comparable solid state amplifier“, continued Todd.
Arcola Theatre is renowned internationally for its work on promoting and
demonstrating sustainability in the arts. Latitude Festival is working this year on
meeting its 10:10 commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 10% in 2010. Both
organisations are also working with Julies Bicycle, in pioneering the new Industry
Green (IG) Mark for sustainability in the creative industries.
For more information see www.arcolaenergy.com or contact
Ben Todd, ben@arcolatheatre.com / 07974 240 612
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