Sports arenas are going solar

You may not have realized it as you were rooting for your home team, but there’s a good chance the venue of the last sporting event you attended was solar powered. Adding solar panels to arenas is trending around the United States as a way to save on electricity costs and benefit the environment. In fact, nearly 42 million of us attended an event at a stadium, arena or raceway with a solar system last year!i See Solar Industry’s article about it here.

Professional teams and facilities have installed 34 megawatts of solar capacity in the last five years and Vivint Solar was among the early participants in this solar sporting movement. In 2016, more than 2,700 solar panels were installed on the Vivint Smart Home Arena, generating enough electricity every year to power 89 home games for the Utah Jazz basketball team.

The home of the Vivint Smart Home Arena and the Utah Jazz is in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is ranked among the 10 most polluted American cities by short-term particle pollution.ii The solar energy system at the arena will reduce the toxic load on the local air quality by the equivalent of cutting 31.7 million miles driven by vehicles.iii

“Turning the Vivint Smart Home Arena into a solar powered venue was a clean energy decision that is going to make a huge environmental impact on a community deeply affected by the inversion,” said Vivint Solar CEO David Bywater. “We also hoped it would encourage other venues to choose clean, renewable energy as a major source of electrical power.”

Going solar was the right thing to do for the Salt Lake City community as well as the facility, which is why we’re so happy to see other teams and venues stepping up to the solar plate.

Fun facts about the solar sports movement today:

• The NFL has the highest percentage of stadiums with solar - 32 percent (MLB and NBA are close at 30 percent each)1

• All the winners of major sporting championships so far this year have facilities with solar: Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Capitals and Golden State Warriors2

• The Indianapolis motor speedway has the biggest on-site solar capacity in professional sports at 9.6 megawatts3 (offsetting as much greenhouse gas pollution as cutting 560 million miles driven!45)

• Solar panels at Lincoln Financial Field - home of the Philadelphia Eagles - generate enough power in one day to power two homes for a full year6

• Energy generated by the Daytona International Speedway’s solar system offsets 2,200 metric tons of CO₂ - same as driving two million laps around the Speedway’s track7

• The total solar capacity in professional sports is 46 megawatts - enough to power almost 8,000 homes in the US8

The US isn’t the only place sports arenas are going green - check out our post on Solar Power in the Twenty-first Century to see a stadium in Taiwan that’s fully powered by solar and other innovations using clean solar energy. Then follow your team to clean energy victory with your own rooftop solar! Visit us at vivintsolar.com to get started.

Endnotes:

i.https://solarindustrymag.com/solar-is-becoming-commonplace-for-professional-sports-teams/ ii.http://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/sota/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html iii.https://www.vivintsolar.com/newsroom/press-releases/vivint-solar-installs-solar-panels-utah-jazz-nba-arena 1.https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-win-study-solar-us-professional-sports 2.https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-win-study-solar-us-professional-sports 3.https://solarindustrymag.com/solar-is-becoming-commonplace-for-professional-sports-teams/ 4.kWh = kW x 1235 (avg sun hours) X 30 (years of panel life) x .87 (degradation) 5.https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator 6.https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-win-study-solar-us-professional-sports 7.https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-win-study-solar-us-professional-sports 8.https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-win-study-solar-us-professional-sports