Auckland Harbour Bridge is about to become $10 million brighter

Tuesday, 12 December 2017

The Auckland Harbour Bridge's 90,000 LEDs will be switched on on January 27.

One of New Zealand's most strategic transport assets is getting $10 million brighter.

The Auckland Harbour Bridge is in the final stages of installation of a massive lighting system that will rival the Sky Tower for night-time visual real estate.

Every visible beam, arch, pile, girder, strut and pylon will be covered in about 90,000 individually controlled colour-changing LED pixels, with an additional 100 spotlights thrown in for good measure.

The Auckland Harbour Bridge is about to become $10m brighter, with the installation of 'Vector Lights'.

Even the road lights are getting an LED upgrade.

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Crews began installing the lights in September.

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The finished product will be a bridge that can illuminate in infinite different ways for special events, then revert back to a default mode, with what promoters promise will be aesthetically pleasing yet subtle architectural lighting settings for every-night use - a perfect post-card or Instagram-worthy backdrop to the Super City.

Hundreds of metres of LED lights were stuck to the side of the bridge.

'You're going to have this amazing canvas that you can change and manipulate [and have] full creative license to do what you want with,' explained Vector Project Manager Paul Cannin.

'[The] lights will be used to mark significant dates throughout the year, such as Auckland Anniversary Day, Anzac Day and Matariki.'

The icing on the cake is that the project will essentially be fuelled by renewable solar energy.

All the electricity drained from the grid to light the 1km bridge will be off-set by power generated by 600 new solar panels feeding into several fridge-sized Tesla batteries.

Mandylights project manager Jean Pierre Jammaers says teams installing the lights had to adapt quickly to Auckland's temperamental weather.

By using solar energy and batteries, Vector says it will be avoiding adding a potential 27 tonnes of carbon going into the atmosphere per year.

A slew of companies have been working since April to get the permanent installation, named 'Vector Lights', in place.

Installation crews had to be physically fit to climb the bridge every day.

Project-lead Vector committed to investing $10 million to the project, contributing to the installation and maintenance costs over the next 10 years.

Bridge authorities NZ Transport Agency and Auckland Council were the two other key players in the project.

Workers had to make sure all loose items like hard hats, power tools and mobile phones were tethered so they didn't fall onto passing motorists or boats.

The council, through ATEED, committed $200,000 per year, to also cover installation, re-programming and marketing to national and international audiences.

The lights were designed and abseiled into place by Mandylights, a Sydney-based company that specialises in light installations and international event production.

A driver distraction study will be carried out to measure the light's the impact on motorists.

And Assembly, the group behind the recent Air NZ safety video featuring Katie Holmes and Cuba Gooding Jr, will be in charge of programming the lights through a massive server at the Northcote base of the bridge.

Mandylights project manager Jean Pierre Jammaers said two of the main challenges were tailoring the light panels to the many different sized beams, and the weather.

The Auckland Harbour Bridge was opened in 1959.

'It's a very large bridge and every part of the bridge is completely unique. There is about 177 different beams … and everyone of those beams is a different size.'

This required a huge variety of different sized brackets that could be modified to fit around the different sized beams, to hold the lights in place, Jammaers said.

The four outer lanes were then 'clipped-on' ten years later.

The other challenge for the abseiling crew was the environment.

'It can be every type of weather in just a single day, we're talking strong winds, bitterly cold rain and glorious sunshine - so it's certainly something we have to take into consideration and react with appropriately.'

The fittings also had to be to resistant to the corrosive salt spray environment of the bridge.

'We've had to take serious consideration of absolutely every single bolt, washer and fixing and how it's going to last the 10 years that it's going to be on the bridge.'

Vector Lights have been signed on for an initial 10 years, with an option to extend afterwards.

Planning started in mid-April, with installation kicking off from late-september, with the official turn on date being January 27, 2018.

Vector and the council went through a complex resource consent process for the project, which included ecological bird-life studies, light pollution studies and consultations with nearby resident associations.

Lighting by numbers

10,000,000 - The amount of dollars Vector is sinking into the project.

90,000 - The number of colour-changing LEDs on the bridge

100 - The number of spotlights on the bridge.

600 - The number of solar panels providing energy for the lights.

114 - The amount of solar energy, in megawatts per hour, the solar panels at Wynyard Quarter will generate per annum - that's enough to power 11 homes for a year.

27 - The tonnes of carbon Vector is avoiding releasing into the atmosphere per year by using solar power and batteries.