Michigan Stadium upgrades lights, to feature new capabilities

Night games at The Big House are about to get even better. #GoBlue

In 2010, with the additions of the new towers on the East and West sides of The Big House, Michigan Stadium got its first permanent lighting. Before that, when the Wolverines would play a later game late in the season, temporary lights would be set up in the concourse to keep the game going as it got dark outside. But with the additions that are now more than a decade old, the maize and blue could then start hosting night games, which it did beginning in 2011.

But the existing stadium lights are limited compared to what you see in other stadiums nowadays. Georgia, Rutgers, and Nebraska will redden their lights at times, adopting the team colors for veritable light shows in the middle of games. However, at The Big House, the bright white lights were static.

That’s now changed. In addition to renovating the scoreboards — which also were upgraded at the time of the tower additions — Michigan is upgrading the lights. A helicopter came in to install the new lighting system on Monday.

More details from The Michigan Insider’s Alejandro Zùñiga:

Michigan Stadium will debut an upgraded LED system at the Big House that will allow for color-changing, music-synchronized light shows, in addition to other improvements, as The Michigan Insider first reported to its VIP subscribers last week.

The new setup is brighter and provides more uniform lighting in addition to being energy efficient, a person with knowledge of the project told The Michigan Insider. The color-changing capabilities are synchronized with the new scoreboards and sound system for immersive shows.

With newer, bigger scoreboards in high definition, as well as upgraded lights, fans will get a more robust experience when going to a game in-person at The Big House, especially at night games.

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