Lighting
The CN Tower was once lit at night with incandescent lights, but they were removed in 1997, because they were inefficient and expensive to repair. In June 2007, the tower was outfitted with 1,330 super-bright LED lights inside the elevator shafts, shooting up over the main pod and upward to the top of the tower's mast to light the tower from dusk until 2 a.m. The official opening ceremony took place on June 28 before the Canada Day holiday weekend.
The tower changes its lighting scheme on holidays and to commemorate major events. After the 95th Grey Cup in Toronto, the tower was lit up in green and white to represent the colours of the Grey Cup champion Saskatchewan Roughriders. From sundown on August 27, 2011 to sunrise the following day, the tower was lit in orange, the official colour of the New Democratic Party, to commemorate the death of federal NDP leader Jack Layton.
Programmed from a desktop computer with a wireless network interface controller, the LEDs use less energy to light than the previously used incandescent lights (10% less energy than the dimly lit version and 60% less than the brightly lit version). The estimated cost to use the LEDs is $1,000 per month.
During the spring and autumn bird migration seasons, the lights will be turned off to comply with the voluntary Fatal Light Awareness Program, which "encourages buildings to dim unnecessary exterior lighting to mitigate bird mortality during spring and summer migration."
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Famous quotes containing the word lighting:
“Popular art is normally decried as vulgar by the cultivated people of its time; then it loses favor with its original audience as a new generation grows up; then it begins to merge into the softer lighting of “quaint,” and cultivated people become interested in it, and finally it begins to take on the archaic dignity of the primitive.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.”
—William James (1842–1910)