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Energy costs are increasing<\/a>, and while it may cost a lot more than before to heat or cool a home, they\u2019re basically peanuts compared to operating a hockey arena. That\u2019s why the National Hockey League is bringing in a building automation heavyweight to help.<\/p>\n This week, the NHL announced a new partnership<\/a> with Honeywell aimed at increasing the efficiency of hockey facilities around the country in an attempt to lower operating costs. The multi-year partnership makes Honeywell\u2014a massive company that provides products and services to many different industries\u2014the \u201cOfficial Building Automation and Energy Management Partner of the NHL.\u201d<\/p>\n The primary issue the partnership seeks to address is a lack of energy efficiency in NHL arenas, practice facilities, and community rinks across the U.S. and Canada, and as such, Honeywell will analyze, address, and then provide AI-enabled automation technologies to lower power consumption and help with climate control. Ice is a difficult thing to manage, particularly in buildings that are also hosting tens of thousands of people for basketball games, concerts, and other events\u2014Honeywell\u2019s tech, hopefully, will help make it easier to control costs related to energy usage.<\/p>\n \u201cWe keep pumping more technology into our buildings, it\u2019s getting more complex in there, we\u2019re using more energy, and having Honeywell help us be more efficient is hugely important,\u201d David Lehanski, SVP of business development and innovation at the NHL, tells Fast Company<\/em>. <\/p>\n The cost increases are no joke, either. Greg Turner, chief solutions officer at Honeywell\u2019s Building Automation unit, says that arenas and hockey rinks are facing 11-17% increases in energy costs, and that makes it \u201cpretty hard to sustain.\u201d But Turner also notes that increasing sustainability measures and lowering costs across a spectrum of different facilities isn\u2019t necessarily something that can be solved by \u201cwriting a giant check.\u201d Instead, it requires on-the-ground coordinated efforts and expertise.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is something that we know how to do, and we\u2019ve been doing it for almost 40 years,\u201d Turner says. \u201cWe\u2019ve done this really effectively, and we decided to see how it applies to hockey, and it turns out to be a great partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n He notes that the actual process for how Honeywell will help each facility follows a basic protocol: They speak with the facility\u2019s owner or manager, learn the pain points, look at operating costs and energy bills, and develop a sense of an operating model, which Honeywell\u2019s team then uses to develop an energy-savings model. That could include figuring out when parts of the building need to be lit, cooled, or warmed, and making the facility, overall, more flexible, depending on the space\u2019s demand.<\/p>\n \u201cYou really need to learn how they operate their facility, and then you automate it.\u201d<\/p>\nDeveloping automation plans at NHL arenas<\/h2>\n
Growing the game<\/h2>\n