The United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 15 for short, closed with top marks given for the lighting of the entire proceedings. Seelite A/S under the direction of lighting designer Lars Nissen, deployed more than 1000 GLP Impression fixtures to light the plenum rooms, television broadcast locations and other ancillary areas. Seelite used all of their own fixtures, which they originally purchased for the Roskilde music festival and sub hired the remainder from AED Rent in Belgium, knowing that the Impression could easily handle this task.
A goal for using the fixtures was the reduction in power consumption over previous systems, without compromising light quality. The Danish foreign ministry, Seelite's client, and the host broadcaster had laid down strict quality levels for even output levels of 700 lux at each delegation table and an even colour temperature of 2900K, which had to be adhered to throughout the entire location, to ensure consistency. Achieving these criteria was easy as the GLP Impression features such a wide and even colour range combined with high output levels. The final power usage for the entire event came in at a fraction of that of previous lighting systems used in the capital's Bella Centre venue for similar events.
The main political meetings were held in two plenum rooms named after renowned Danes, Karen Blixen and Tycho Brahe respectively. Working in a comfortable environment was important for all of these sessions, many of which ran late into the night, and the LED sources of the GLP Impressions ensured that it was just the political heat that was on, and not the heat from the fixtures. Lars Nissen added, "A low noise level from the lighting was important throughout the venue, but probably most so in the plenum rooms. The Impressions ran silently so that every word from the top table was heard undisturbed throughout each room."
A major highlight of the event was the breakthrough high level event on 18 December which featured world leaders from 192 countries all working towards a common goal. Nissen commented: "The tension was so high that morning. Everyone knew that millions of people around the world were tuned in. The lighting system had to look good and it had to perform reliably, and the Impressions did not let us down in any way."
Planning for the event had started many months earlier and right from the beginning, it became clear that the lighting fixture choice was going to be critical. Seelite's project manager, Morten Topp commented, "We had some strong ideas of what we thought would work from our own experience, but we also had to satisfy the very strict requirements of the host broadcaster and the Danish Foreign Ministry. The Impressions were there at the starting line up and were the only fixture which consistently met the requirements that were demanded of it."
(Jim Evans)
