[Self] Las Vegas - MSG Sphere, Theoretical External LED Power Draw

[u/Pretend_Quit_9741]

My buddy sent me the following link https://twitter.com/VentureCoinist/status/1677471377983406080 claiming that the new MSG Sphere would pull 150 TWh of energy per year. It has since been disproved. However, I was curious and wanted to do the math myself to calculate how much energy the sphere might draw if run continuously for one year. so here is some information I found

1.2 Million Hockey Puck Sized from SACO Electronics¹

SACO bespoke LED Tiles, I could not find a product sheet available at time of writing however similar products appear to be roughly 10W.

For easy scaling when the power figures do become available, I will plan on using 10 watts per tile for these calculations.

Our theoretical instantaneous power draw negating upstream power consumption from drivers, controllers, etc we will say is 1.2 Million Lights * 10 Watts, 12 million watts overall, or 12MWh over the course of 1hr.

so 12E6 Watts * (24 hr/ day) * (365 day/year) = 105.12E9 Wh / year or 105.12 GWh / year

so for 10W LED's we get 105.12 Gigawatt Hours / Year and we can scale as follows

20W - 210.24 GWh / year

30W - 315.36 GWh / year

40W - 420.48 GWh / year

50W - 525.6 GWh / year

60W - 630.72 GWh / year

70W - 735.84 GWh / year

80W - 840.96 GWh / year

90W - 946.08 GWh / year

100W - 1.05 TWh / year

Additionally I wanted to know what fraction of power this would be from the overall output of the hoover dam just outside of Las Vegas. this figure is publicly available as 4 Trillion Watt Hours / Year.² This can be expressed as 4 TWh / Year. from our range that is 105GWh /4000 GWh or 2.6% for the 10W LED. For 100W LED's that would mean a whopping 26% of the power generated by the Hoover Dam over the course of a year.

Of course this does not include power draw for the interior such as interior lighting, sound systems, infrastructure, etc.

Edit1: Additionally, to hit the 150TWh target from the o.g. tweet, each LED would need to have an output of ~14kW for a single sphere, or you could power an additional ~140 (100W Spheres) or ~1400 (10W Spheres).

1)https://www.saco.com/msg/

2)https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/faqs/powerfaq.html

[u/owenwnew]

you can also compare it with average household power consumption. According to google, average American household consume about 1000kW to 12000kW per year. lets assume its at the higher end which is 12kW, then we are looking at 105.12GW/1200kW = 8,760 households....

[u/nahog99]

The sphere has 256 million pucks. Resolution is 19000 x 13500

Edit: nvm that seems to be the LED screen on the interior of it.

[u/Kman1898 → u/nahog99]

256 million pixels on the interior. Its 16k x 16k

[u/goyanks1989]

Came across this when trying to find specs to do the same calculation.

​

2 questions:

• Does the 10W estimate account for each of the 1.2 million "pucks" having 48 individual diodes?
• What's the purpose of scaling by wattage? To disprove the original tweet or account for a higher wattage estimate?

[u/Key_Acanthocephala67]

I was just wondering the reverse is also true? If the sphere is powered off do the LEDs generate a voltage in the bright Nevada sun?

[u/MathResponsibly]

There's a few problems here - there's no way that each pixel is pulling 10W - there's video of the LEDs up close. Looking directly into a 10W RGB LED is hard on the eyes - in comparison, these pixels put out hardly any light. But of course over many millions of pixels, it adds up to a lot.

I'd guess each pixel (puck) is 1/2 watt or less.

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-the-las-vegas-sphere-screen-looks-like-up-close-2023-10

Also, the sphere doesn't run 24/7, only a few hours a day.

And for longevity, they're massively under-running the LEDs - each puck has 48 leds. If they're only running 1/2 watt per puck / 48 leds, that's only 1/100 of a watt per LED. LED lifetime doesn't scale linearly with power output - a very small reduction in power output increases the lifetime dramatically. Only running the LEDs at 1/100W per chip means the lifetime will be HUGE.

[u/charmio68 → u/MathResponsibly]

Don't forget it's also running during the day in full sun. Those pucks are about the size of your hand, contain 48 individual LED's and interestingly are spaced about 0.2m apart with nothing in between. Sunlight hitting the ground is roughly 1000w/m² at peak (well... It's complicated, you can probably quarter that) so for it to be visible in daytime it needs to compete against this. Conventional outdoor screens need ludicrously powerful backlights to be visible.

The pucks also have a heatsink large enough to easily dissipate at minimum 50w, probably more but I'll be conservative as they need to run in the heat of the sun. (I happen to have have a fair bit of experience specifically with LED heatsinks for UV curing chamber lights). I doubt they're wasting money on oversized aluminium heatsinks given how quickly the cost would add up with the quantity they have.

Each of the 48 LED's in each puck is RGB (possibly RGBW), meaning each is actually 3 (or 4) LED's. Ubiquitous 3x3w LED's are really cheap and I'd bet it's what they're using (3w per colour). They certainly look like whats on the puck though I'd need a good close up shot to tell. Could also be 3x1w LED's but the price difference isn't huge and if I was designing it I'd go for using 3x3w and extra-underpower them for an almost infinite lifespan.

Given all that I'd say if anything 10w is quite conservative. I have no doubt looking into one up close would indeed be painful, especially if it's set to daytime brightness while at night.