Sizing an outdoor LED wall: what it weighs, what it draws, and how high it is allowed to go

01 — One panel

A specification sheet publishes two power figures, not one.

ROE Visual’s Vanish ST range is sold for touring, festivals and sports events, and publishes a full table. These are its figures, read from that table on October 2, 2026.

Brightness, and what outdoor costs in pixel pitch
The V3ST is 3.9 mm pitch at a maximum calibrated 4,500 nits. The V4ST is 4.6 mm at 5,000 nits and the V6ST is 6.94 mm, also at 5,000 nits. The brighter figure arrives with the coarser pitch, which is the trade the range is built around: outdoors the audience is further away, so pitch can be given up for the brightness that daylight demands.
Power, published as maximum and average
Every full panel in the range — V3ST, V4ST and V6ST alike — is listed at 700 W maximum and 350 W average. The half panels are listed at 350 W and 175 W. That factor of two is the single most consequential number on the sheet, because a generator sized on the average figure and a show that runs white content at full brightness are not the same event.
Weight, per square meter
The full panel is 1000 × 1000 × 116 mm (39.4" × 39.4" × 4.57"). The V3ST weighs 27.5 kg (60.63 lb); the V4ST 34.5 kg (76.06 lb); the V6ST 34.3 kg (75.62 lb). Because the panel is a meter square, the weight per panel and the weight per square meter are the same number, which makes the wall arithmetic in §02 unusually easy to do on site.
Heat, and the temperature the panel is rated to work in
Each full panel is listed at 2,390 BTU maximum and 1,100 BTU average, with an operational range of −20 °C to 45 °C (−4 °F to 113 °F) at 10% to 90% relative humidity. The range is IP65 rated. Those two facts together are what make it an outdoor product, and the upper number is the one worth reading twice in Florida — see §04.

02 — The wall

A meter-square panel makes the arithmetic something you can do standing up.

Multiply the published per-panel figures by the panel count. Two worked examples, using the V4ST at 34.5 kg, 700 W / 350 W and 2,390 / 1,100 BTU.

A 6 × 3 meter wall — 18 panels
Weight 621 kg (1,369 lb), before any ground support, bumper, ballast or ground protection. Power 12.6 kW at maximum and 6.3 kW average. On a 208 V three-phase service that is about 35 A per phase at maximum and 17.5 A average. Heat 43,020 BTU per hour at maximum.
A 10 × 5 meter wall — 50 panels
Weight 1,725 kg (3,803 lb). Power 35 kW maximum, 17.5 kW average — roughly 97 A per phase at 208 V three-phase at maximum, about 49 A average. Heat 119,500 BTU per hour at maximum. The screen alone has become a load worth sizing a distribution plan around, separately from audio and lighting.
Why the maximum figure is the one that matters outdoors
Indoors a wall is usually run well below its ceiling. Outdoors in daylight it is run near the top of its brightness range for as long as the sun is up, which is precisely when the maximum figure applies. A park with shore power and a park where the job carries a generator are different sites, and this is the calculation that tells you which one you are standing in.

03 — Height

The published limit almost nobody quotes: six panels, stacked.

The same specification table carries two structural limits, and they are the figures that decide what a field can actually hold.

Every panel in the Vanish ST range publishes a maximum stacking of six panels and a maximum hanging of twenty. The panels are a meter tall. So a ground-supported wall of this product stops at six meters — about 19 feet 8 inches — on the manufacturer’s own figure, and a hung wall at twenty meters, about 65 feet 7 inches.

That is a hard ceiling arriving from an unexpected direction. The usual assumption is that a taller wall is a question of budget or of truck space. On a festival site it is neither: above six panels the wall has to hang, and hanging means a roof or a tower, which means a structure, an engineer and a wind plan. A site with no building is where that distinction stops being paperwork, because there is nothing overhead to hang from that the production did not bring and did not stand up itself.

It also means the honest answer to “can we go taller” is sometimes no at the specification level rather than at the quoting level, and that is a better conversation to have during design than during load-in.

04 — Heat, and the Florida ceiling

The panel is rated to 113 °F — and it is also making its own heat.

Two published figures that have to be read together rather than separately.

The operational range is −20 °C to 45 °C, which is −4 °F to 113 °F, at 10% to 90% relative humidity. Taken alone that looks generous for South Florida, where ambient air does not often reach it. Taken with the other published figure — 2,390 BTU per hour per panel at maximum — it reads differently, because the wall is adding heat to the air immediately around it at the same time as it is being asked to survive in it.

It is worth being precise about what the published number is and is not. It is an ambient operating range. It is not a statement about the surface temperature of a dark panel in direct July sun, which is a different measurement that the specification sheet does not make. That gap is why orientation, the hours the wall faces open sky, and the airflow behind it are design decisions on an outdoor build rather than details, and why the same wall is an easier job in a shaded park than on open asphalt.

05 — The alternative, weighed

A projection surface weighs roughly one sixty-ninth as much per square meter.

Which sounds decisive until you read what the screen manufacturer says its own products are for.

The weight comparison is not close
Harkness publishes its Stagelite front projection range and its Alfresco outdoor range at 0.50 kg/m² (0.10 lb/ft²), with no maximum size. Against the V4ST’s 34.5 kg/m² that is about 69 times lighter per square meter, and the “no maximum size” line stands directly against a six-panel stacking limit. On weight and on scale, projection wins without an argument.
Which turns the structure into a wind problem instead
A surface that light does not load a structure; it catches air. Harkness describes the Alfresco material as “0.4mm thick robust material to minimise stretching due to wind and environmental conditions”. The engineering question moves from how much the structure carries to how much it resists, which is a different calculation and a different set of ballast.
And the manufacturer’s own descriptions place the range after dark
Harkness describes Stagelite Matt White 100 as a “general purpose contrast screen intended for a variety of auditoria, generally in dark conditions”, and Contrast Grey 70 as “generally intended for dark conditions, but can also minimise the effects of ambient light”. The outdoor product in the range is named Alfresco and is sold for outdoor cinema and drive-ins. Those are night-time applications described in the manufacturer’s own words.
The projector does not close the gap by being large
Panasonic publishes the PT-RQ50K at 51,000 center lumen / 50,000 lumen, native 4K and 20,000:1 — among the brightest single projectors in live events, and roughly double the 26,000 lumens of the PT-RQ32K on the same page. Panasonic’s own list of where it is deployed reads “sporting events, arena concerts, outdoor mapping attractions, or museum exhibitions”. Projection mapping is an after-dark discipline. The brightest product in the category is described, by the company that makes it, largely in terms of rooms and nightfall.

06 — What this decides on a festival site

The choice is usually made by the clock, and then paid for by the ground.

Pulling the published figures together into the order the questions actually arrive in.

If any part of the show happens while the sun is up, the published specifications have already answered it: a 5,000-nit panel rated IP65 is built for that condition and a 0.50 kg/m² front projection surface that its own maker describes in terms of dark conditions is not. If the whole show is after dark, projection returns as a real option and brings an enormous advantage in weight and in unlimited size.

Once LED is settled, the site inherits the arithmetic in §02 — a weight to spread, a maximum draw to size distribution against rather than an average, and heat to get out from behind the wall. Then §03 caps the height at six panels unless something is standing up to hang from, which on open ground is a structure the production brings.

None of those four questions is about taste, and all four can be answered from published documents before anyone walks the site. The luminance half of the decision — foot-lamberts, screen gain and the viewing categories a room is judged against — is worked through separately, and is linked below.

07 — In short

The useful thing about a specification sheet is that it settles arguments nobody enjoys having. A wall either fits inside the power, the weight and the height the site can give it, or it does not, and both answers are available in writing well before a truck is booked.

Where the figures come from