Budapest's Chain Bridge is 150 years old this year. GE Lighting has relit it to mark the anniversary. Electrical Contractor goes down the river.
Tierney Clark designed the Chain Bridge linking the towns of Buda and Pest in 1848. The chains swoop across the Danube, strung between four giant stone towers. It was a feat of engineering and a magnificent sight.

Today that sight has been enhanced by GE Lighting. The company, which has a major investment in the area through GE Lighting Tungsram, has relit the bridge to commemorate its 150th anniversary. Gabor Demszky, mayor of Budapest, and Mike Zafirovski, president and chief executive officer of GE Lighting Europe, unveiled the bridge on 19 June as the highlight of the Budapest festival.

The lighting scheme uses a mix of energy saving lamps and ceramic metal halide. GE used 260 ceramic metal halides to light the bridge and 1178 energy saving cfls to illuminate the chains. The new illuminations bring the bridge to life at night, picking out special details. Even the coat of arms is visible after dark.

All of the re-illumination work was carried out by GE between mid April and 18 June. This included renewing and replacing all cabling and fittings on the bridge and installing new products.

The energy consumption of the illuminations has been reduced by nearly 70% when compared to the old lighting scheme.

What's New in Exterior Lighting

Abacus has manufactured a new range of floodlights which combine high optical performance with good light pollution control. The Challenger series is designed for use in sports stadia and the likes. It uses double-ended lamps of either 1000 or 2000W which offer optimum optical control and good stability.

Whitecroft Lighting

Whitecroft Lighting has launched four new ranges of lighting fixtures for open spaces and architecture. New to the collection are Ergo, Centurion, Spectre and Spectre 200. All these new designs and enhancements of established models are featured in the Whitecroft’s Outdoor brochure.

Moonlight Design

Moonlight Design has created Kali, a modern style lantern. Standing on a 4m high column, three diecast aluminium arms support a circular reflector above a 70 W or 150 W metal halide lamp. Control gear is mounted in the base of the column.

Sill Lighting

Sill Lighting’s 480 series is a range of buried uplighters. The frame is of diecast aluminium with a stainless steel cover and a safety glass lens. The fitting is designed for 35 to 150 W metal halide lamps, although the smaller luminaire is also available in a compact fluorescent form.

Fitzgerald Lighting

Fitzgerald Lighting unveils Sentinel, a wall packette luminaire. It is offered as part of a complete range including 50 and 70 W SON, 80 W MBF and various CFL sources.

LumiLeds Lighting

LumiLeds Lighting, a joint venture between Philips Lighting and Hewlett Packard, is developing an led lighting module which can be used on non-white functional road lighting applications.

Thorn Lighting

Thorn Lighting has unveiled Decostreet, a range of three decorative lanterns. Designed to take metal halide, high pressure sodium or mercury lamps, the luminaires are available in half sphere, half oval or half cone style with flat or bowl shaped glass.

Source

Electrical and Mechanical Contractor