DIMMERS IN THEATRES

I have become very hesitant to predict anything in respect of lighting technology – it is just moving way too fast for anyone to predict, we can only make educated guesses.

We knew five years ago that LED is the way to go, but could we then have predicted the LED based spots launched at Prolight+Sound by Robe and ETC? Best guesses back then was that they were at least ten years away. Ooops.

So I am going to stay on safe ground here, dimmers, and their future in theatres.

I predict that we may see one, or at most, two more large scale dimmer replacements in South Africa like we just saw at ArtsCape and The Playhouse Company. The next ones will have far lower dimmer counts as LED based luminaires become more prevalent.

This is going to be driven from two sides – advances in lighting technology and the necessity of saving power.

Already we are seeing more and more moving heads in theatres, requiring hot power and DMX signal – no dimmers required. With LEDs becoming more powerful and seeing widespread use, even in House Light installations, dimmers will be required even less.

The cost of electricity is forcing managements to cut on power consumption and where are they looking now? The operational budget and the obvious place to cut cost is on the lighting bill. This causes a bit of a conundrum – shows are getting bigger in respect of lighting, but we need to cut costs. How can we provide more light for less power cost? Simple, LEDs.

Dimmer manufacturers like ADB and ETC seem to agree with me, they are now making modules that can act like dimmers when required, but become true “non-dims” when only hot power is required. This is the way to go – any outlet can be either a dimmer or hot power, you choose.

Dimmers have come a long way from their salt water origins, but we have to start saying goodbye to them. 

We have to convince managements that they must invest the future electricity cost savings in new technology lights now!

There are rebate programmes for households going to solar geysers, what about a rebate programme for theatres converting to LED?

Who has contacts at ESKOM?