Sunday, all of America and much of the world was tuned into television’s biggest annual event, when suddenly, lights out!
The broadcast crew on CBS scrambled to find out what was wrong as half of the lights and power at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome went dark. It was one of those rare, zany moments in television that left everybody asking questions and seemingly nobody getting answers. Maybe above all else, it created one of the more memorable Super Bowl moments in history.
A day later, we finally have details on what caused the outage. A system put in place by the Superdome’s energy provider was alerted to the massive amounts of power being consumed, triggering a cut down of the power being sent their way.
Such a system doesn’t sound like all that bad of an idea, but in this case, was a an oversight that caused an embarrassing moment for the NFL.
So this leaves one to wonder, just how could this have been avoided? Maybe more importantly, what NFL stadiums out there have at least some systems in place for energy independence? While none of them might be providing 100 percent of the power to their own stadiums, solar panels could certainly lighten the load of outside energy providers.
Below is an excerpt from an article that talks about this very topic in response to yesterday’s Super Bowl blackout. Have a look…
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…According to SEIA’s (Solar Energies Industries Association) President and CEO Rhone Resch, the Philadelphia Eagles are going to be claiming the NFL’s greenest stadium by the end of February. They are currently installing 11,000 solar panels at Lincoln Financial Field which, together with 14 wind microturbines, will generate 3 megaWatts of power – the biggest in the NFL.
There are a lot of runners-up, however. The Seattle Seahawks have a 2.5-acre solar array at CenturyLink Field; the Jets’ and Giants’ Metlife Stadium has 1,350 solar panels; the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium has 3,000; and the Redskins’ FedEx Field has 8,000 panels on the parking lot canopies, plus their 30-foot ‘Solar Man’ statue also covered in photovoltaics.
Don’t count the 49ers out, though: Power giant NRG (one of Geostellar’s investors), is helping to build the team’s new stadium in Santa Clara, CA, which is going for LEED Certification, the greenest of the green, by 2014: it will have three solar installations covering the stadium roof, the training center, and bridges in and out, and will generate 400 kiloWatts of energy at capacity. Lots of other NFL teams have new programs in the works, too.
One would hope these efforts would lead to games in which the lights stay on.
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So you can see that such measures are already being taken to hopefully prevent another such blackout in the future. It’s unfortunate that the NFL had to endure this whole situation yesterday, but a tiny bit interesting at the same time.
Like it so often seems to be doing lately around the energy world, the Sun is on its way to save the day!!!
To check out the full article from above, head here: http://geostellar.com/site/geo-blog/solar-bowl-which-stadium-has-greenest-and-most-reliable-power