Wireless Controls for School Gyms

Genoa-Kingston High School: Lighting Controls Create a Gym for All Seasons

Genoa-Kingston High is a smalltown school with big town pride. Located 63 miles northwest of metropolitan Chicago, the school has an enrollment of 600. Typical of a small-town school, Genoa-Kingston’s gymnasium is the center of social activities as well as sporting events and civic functions throughout the year for the local ‘Cods’ community. With the previous fluorescent lighting system, school administrators were spending money on unneeded energy usage. They wish to upgrade their lighting to gain better control over different sections of the gym and to reap savings on their energy bill.

In upgrading their existing system, Joe Ratliff, Genoa-Kingston’s Director of Operations has outlined the following objectives and expectations:

Control the light levels to create the perfect settings for individualized events.
Efficient energy management using controls to dim the lights during sunlight hours.
Only turn on lights in the part of the facility in active use.
Reduce energy costs, in actual electricity used and cost of maintenance of the new system.
Better quality of lights – elimination of glare and hotspots throughout the facility.
Ease of control for the new system, no additional cost in new hires and training.
Must be durable, able to withstand the expected ‘wear and tear’ impacts in a typical high school gymnasium.

With the installation of Filamento’s VALTO 600, the Genoa-Kingston Gym became a gym for all seasons. Director Ratliff can now portion off the gym for different functions, all the while delivering no-glare and consistent light sources to the directed zones. The annual saving alone has been adding up to $20,000, a nice boost for a smalltown school budget.

But equally impressive are the non-monetary benefits. The new system enables the staff unprecedented ease of control and maintenance. The Bluetooth control with the Bluetooth scene controller makes it easy to install since no additional control wires are needed and the controller can be placed anywhere. Genoa-Kingston uses the Bluetooth controls to create the perfect individualized lighting scenes for school dances, sporting events and school assemblies. For example, during basketball games they could dim the lights in the stands in order to highlight the players on the court.

“All the comments we have gotten on the lights have been positive. Everyone is impressed with them.” Joe Ratliff, Director of Operations, Genoa Kingston SchoolDistrict. With Filamento’s state-of-the art lighting system, Genoa-Kingston High School Gym became a venue for all seasons and all reasons. Go Cods!