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Photos courtesy of Emmalee Schaumburg / Schaumburg Photography.
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Missouri's Pleasant Valley Church leadership is investing in lighting to provide an immersive worship environment with hopes to dramatically reduce the venue's running costs as well. They've installed120 Chroma-Q Inspire color-mixing LED house lights.
Pleasant Valley Baptist Church (PVBC) is on the north side of the Kansas City metropolitan area, and has a weekly attendance of around 4,000 people. The Church has existed since the 1940s at various locations, but was purpose-built at its current location in 1997.
PVBC has three unique styles of worship service happening every weekend in the same Worship Center, making flexibility and reliability of the lighting system is very important.
Kansas City-based worship lighting installations specialists, Stark Raving Solutions provided an LED house light ‘shoot out' in collaboration with North American lighting distributor, A.C Lighting Inc., with a view to replacing PVBC's old 500w incandescent house can lights, which had been installed in 1997.
“When demoing and comparing house lights with DMX control from multiple manufacturers, the Chroma-Q Inspire fixtures totally hit the mark for price and functionality,” says Stark Raving Solutions' Marcus Hammond, who was also Technical Director at PVBC from 2004 - 2014.
Hammond continues, “Some of the more traditional services have only white house light, while the more progressive or contemporary services use single colors - or an entire spectrum of colors - across the whole room, to provide the congregation with an immersive worship experience.
“Having a smooth dimming curve down to 0% was a huge factor in PVBC choosing the Inspires,” Hammond continues. “The goal was to have a product that felt like an incandescent fixture at low levels, but would not blink off at a level of 5% or 10%, like other solutions we've tried.”
The Inspire fixtures also met the criteria for an energy-efficient solution that would provide reduced maintenance and running costs.
Hammond explains, “Following an LED retrofit of all types of lighting across the Church's entire 200,000 sq. ft. campus – of which the Inspire house lighting in the main Worship Center was the largest wattage differential from old to new fixtures in the entire project (the house light system's energy consumption has been reduced by over 75%) – the Church has seen a monthly reduction in energy consumption of more than $8k per month. The running cost savings of having LED lighting for the whole campus are therefore huge, equating to a potential annual saving of up to $100,000!”
"The goal was to have a product that felt like an incandescent fixture at low levels, but would not blink off at a level of 5% or 10%, like other solutions we've tried."
Marcus Hammond
Technician, Stark Raving Solutions.
In addition to the LED lighting's long-term energy savings, the Church's local energy utility company offered a significant rebate program, at $1/watt differential per fixture. The Inspire is a 120w fixture, replacing a 500w incandescent fixture, so the rebate was around $380 / fixture multiplied by (120) fixtures. A rebate of more than $45,000 for the Inspire lighting.
By incorporating industry standard DMX-512 control, the Chroma-Q Inspire range is able to integrate seamlessly with an existing stage lighting infrastructure and can be controlled by any DMX-supported lighting console, to provide seamless lighting from stage to audience.
“The option for color has been beneficial for special events, such as the ‘4th of July Patriotic Service', and special music-only nights that are an intentionally immersive worship experience for the congregation,” Hammond explains. “The fact that the Inspire is also convection-cooled was beneficial to the Church. They wanted to minimize the need for future repairs or regular maintenance, such as cleaning filters. It also means the fixtures are totally silent during services.
“We've been highly recommending the Inspire since the product was made available. Stark Raving Solutions knows the quality and reliability associated with the Chroma-Q brand, and the Inspire is a great example of this.”
Other leading house of worship venues to have invested in the Chroma-Q Inspire house light fixture include the Maranatha Assembly of God Church in Minnesota, Celebration Church in Florida, Valley Creek Church in Texas, and the historic Pieterskerk building - formerly a Church - in the Dutch city of Leiden.
Chroma Q's press release says, “Providing a range of beautiful whites, soft pastels and bold saturates all from a single fixture, the Chroma-Q Inspire's fully homogenized lens offers a choice of stunning mixed colors, with no unsightly color separation shadows.”
Available in the Inspire Mini compact version, or more powerful WFX award-winning full-size version, a choice of Black or White exterior housing, and a range of beam angles, the Inspire range is designed for almost any type of entertainment or architectural space - large or small.
Find more information on Stark Raving Solutions here:
Demonstrations of the Chroma-Q Inspire range and other models will be available at the following upcoming tradeshows:
ABTT 2016 - Alexandra Palace, London, England, 22nd - 23rd June
Stand A40 (Dealer, A.C. Entertainment Technologies)
WFX 2016 - Louisville, Kentucky, USA, 21st - 22nd September
Booth 701, (Distributor, A.C. Lighting Inc.)
LDI 2016 - Las Vegas, USA, 21st - 23rd October
Booth 2252, (Distributor, A.C. Lighting Inc.)
