There is some kind of public or private sports centre in almost every town or city. In larger cities, there can even be several large sports complexes. These are facilities with high energy consumption (domestic hot water, long opening hours, lighting, kitchen areas and restaurants…). Is it possible to save energy in sports centres? Let’s take a look at a real case involving our partner Enertips, Centre Atlètic Laietania, where more than €76K savings on energy have been made.
How Sports Centres Consume Energy
Energy consumption in sports centres is high for several reasons:
- First, their size. They can take up several hectares due to having football pitches, basketball courts, multi-sports halls, tennis courts…
- Second, they need to offer such services as showers or even indoor swimming pools. They require DHW, hot water, and to keep the right ambient temperature for doing sport.
- Consumption differs radically between indoor and outdoor installations, and very few sports centres monitor it properly.
For example, sports centres like Centre Atlètic Laietania have both outdoor (running tracks, tennis courts, swimming pools…) and indoor (gymnasium, group activity rooms, cafeterias, showers…) facilities.
The energy consumption of a sports facility like this is mainly divided into electricity and gas. However, water consumption is clearly high too, since they at least have a personal hygiene area, and it will be even higher if they also have facilities for water activities, such as swimming pools and/or spas.
How Much Should be Invested in Order to Save Energy in Sports Centres
In order to save energy in any facility like this, it might not be necessary to start with a large investment, or better still, any investment at all in the facilities.
The success story we are describing today followed the template of the energy management plan investment pyramid:
As you can see, we can start with a very low or almost inexistent investment:
- optimising the contracted power,
- Analysing how the facility is behaving to quickly detect inefficiencies
- Training employees in good energy consumption practices,
These are just a few examples of actions with which you can start saving. But of course, if you want to make bigger savings you will need to invest more. As the pyramid shows, the higher you want to go, the greater the investment. But the returns also tend to come faster the closer you get to the top.
What you must always take into account with any energy-saving project is the need for proper planning of each of the proposed actions.
How Centre Atlètic Laietania Saves more than €76K a Year on Energy
Yes, as you have read, Centre Atlètic Laietania, in the city of Mataró (Barcelona), has made a saving of €76,348 a year, to be exact.
It has 3 buildings and more than 4 hectares of facilities. Founded in 1925, the sports centre has:
- tennis courts,
- Paddle courts,
- Futsal and basketball courts,
- Fitness room
- And rooms for directed activities.
- And, finally 1 indoor and 3 outdoor swimming pools.
To overcome the challenges of the sports centre’s energy efficiency project, Enertips (expert energy managers who have consolidated a 31% saving following the project) conducted a preliminary analysis of its consumption. To do so, they ran a consumption monitoring project using DEXMA.
Why did they choose to use DEXMA?
In their case, the speed of the data processing device, its large number of apps (forecast app, operating hours, maximeter, calculation of the carbon footprint, data optimisation and many more), the ability to work with multi-energy sources (electricity, gas, water, photovoltaic, biomass…), and the simple data display in the generated reports were all very important.
In any case, I encourage you to download the Centre Atlètic Laietania de Mataró (Barcelona) case study and read it carefully. You can take inspiration from it for your future energy efficiency projects, whether or not these involve sports facilities. And don’t forget that you can get to know Enertips better by visiting their website.
