Back Again With Another Quick Word
Summary Statement of Proposed Project
Summary Statement of Proposed Project
Ever since the day hockey was first played on a frozen pond, Canadians have had an undeniable passion for the sport. Even today you can still find people out in freezing cold weather playing on those same natural ice surfaces as generations before them. However in today’s excessive world those frozen ponds just are not good enough for the high demand of the sport. An indoor hockey arena can be found in almost every community in Canada. New facilities are being built for millions of dollars with highly demanding cooling systems to keep the ice at the optimal performance. Imagine if all the heat produced from these cooling systems could be used to heat nearby building, practically high-rise residential building. In Edmonton, Alberta there is a demand for a new downtown hockey arena with adjacent residencies for the nearby Grant MacEwan University. The city of Edmonton could also use a shopping center in at the same location. The location of the site has already been picked out and it has great potential for a state of the art facility. It also has the potential to be a leader in environmentally friendly hockey arenas. In a country with so much energy put into these hockey facilities it would be nice to see a change in the way we look at designing them.
Purpose
The purpose of this topic is to better develop more energy efficient hockey arenas in Canada, by using the heat generated from the cooling systems to heat a residential building. There are approximately 2486 arenas in Canada (Hockey Canada, 2005, p3), and each produce an average of 1,500,000 kWh of energy per year (Nichols, 2009, p16). Rexall Place, the current home of the Edmonton Oilers, consumes around 8,750,000 kWh of power annually. An even more staggering statistic is on game day the arena will use 35,000 kWh of power on just that single day (Hanak, Wilson, Herman, Becher, 2007, p31). That is about three times as much power as a residential home will use in a full year. With that much energy being put into these large scale arenas there is going to be wasted heat from the cooling systems, which can be used for the residences and adjacent building. It has been proven to be possible, hockey rinks have been built before with pools in the same facility using the heat from the arena to heat the water in the pool. These facilities have proven to be successful, so instead of heating pools the plan is to heat building.
Goals of the Project
For this project I plan find a system to transfer the energy from the arena to the residences, while attempting to make it one of the most energy efficient hockey arenas in the world. With hockey arenas being such a large consumer of energy, it only makes sense to start developing more creative ways to stop losing valuable energy. I hope that the new Edmonton arena can have a minimal impact on the environment, and a large impact on the way we look at designing large scale sporting facilities. With a sustainable arena in Canada it will help pave the way for other community arenas to either upgrade their current facility or even rethink designing a new one.
Methodology and Analytical Approach
I aim to research how the heat from the cooling system can be transferred to the adjacent building. By studying how heat is transferred from arenas to pool, I hope to find a similar way to transfer the hot air into a venting system and circulate it throughout a residency tower. Also the air must be filtered and be as fresh and clean as possible. It will also be important to design the residential building to be as insulated as possible so that there is a minimal amount of heat loss. I plan to contact the design team that designed the arena in Pittsburgh for advice on methods to keep the arena more sustainable. There are multiple internet sites stating the pros and cons of ice surface cooling systems, and by using those references I will be able to find out the most efficient ways to use their energy.
Previous Studies
In Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Penguins of the NHL just began to play in their new arena. The Consol Energy Center has just been finished and it has already received multiple awards for being a “Green” facility. The arena has been awarded the LEED Gold certification (Kasan, 2010), making it the first NHL arena to reach that standard of sustainability. I plan to design the new Edmonton arena with similar materials and efficiency as the Consol Energy Center.
Plans for Dissemination of Work
By the use of a blog I hope to distribute my information and new discoveries. This way it will be easy for others to keep up to date and follow along my research.
Contribution of the Project and Academic Goals and Objectives
With this project I hope to further my knowledge in arena design and residential towers. In the future I would like to get into the design aspect of building and more specifically recreational facilities. The architectural firm, Populous, have been creating magnificent sporting facilities for many years including; The Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, The Jobing.com Arena in Arizona, The Amway Center in Orlando, and many more. I could see myself fitting in very nicely with an architectural firm such as Populous, and with a background project such as this one it would certainly give me a leg up on the competition.
Through my research I also hope to help Canadian designers promote sustainable hockey arenas. There is such a large hockey market in Canada, even cities such as Winnipeg, Quebec City, and Hamilton are trying hard to get an NHL franchise. With an NHL franchise comes the need of a 16,000 plus seating capacity arena, and with that comes the opportunity to create something that can help save our environment and help promote sustainable living in Canada.
Canada needs to start looking at the big picture in terms of arena upgrades. There is such a large amount of energy lost every day through faulty equipment and out of date systems. I know that with sustainability comes a great cost, but there are future incentives to going ‘green”. Transferring the heat from these ice cooling systems to another building could have a greater initial cost, however it has potential to save money in the long run and it could be a first of many facilities to have these types of systems.
