Major benefits of sharing energy between sports facilities

In many municipalities, sports facilities are among the most energy-intensive buildings. This means that there are also major savings to be made. Connecting solar cells from a roof with several buildings via a PowerShare makes it possible to optimize electricity use and reduce costs.

In Skara municipality, the swimming pool and the ice rink are the buildings in the municipality that require the most electricity. Heating swimming pools and sauna heaters requires a lot of energy in the bathhouse and in the ice rink power peaks over 200kW are created when the ice is flushed when water is both heated and cooled down.

Neither the bathhouse nor the ice rink have roofs that can support a photovoltaic system. On the other hand, the large sports hall Vilanhallen, which is located in the same area, does.

“The original idea was to place a smaller facility at the bathhouse, but when we realized that it would create a risk of leakage from the roof, the idea was born to connect the three buildings to share energy between them,” says Simon Holmgren, property engineer at Skara Municipality.

Dimensioning according to consumption

Vilanhallen’s large roof has now been equipped with a photovoltaic system with a peak power of 260kW. The energy produced is shared via a PowerShare from Ferroamp to the swimming pool and ice rink. A PowerShare is a local direct current network that connects Ferroamp systems in different buildings. Since the photovoltaic system is thus connected to two electricity consumers with different consumption patterns, all the electricity produced can be used locally without having to be sold to the grid.

“A photovoltaic system should be dimensioned according to your own consumption. It is not so beneficial to sell off the electricity from large installations on the grid. If you connect several consumers, such as a swimming pool and an ice rink, with a PowerShare, it will be easier to use the electricity locally,” says Adam Persson at Elektrobyrån, which carried out the installation.

Multipal benefits for the municipality

In addition to the benefits of increased self-consumption of solar energy, the load on the surrounding electricity grid is also reduced. Something that the municipality expects will pay off for them as well.

“We see that, in the long term, electricity companies will increasingly move towards power tariffs for both the electricity you buy and the electricity you produce and sell on the grid. There will be money to be made by keeping the effect down. With this arrangement, we are prepared,” says Simon Holmgren.

Skara municipality collaborates with the neighbouring municipalities in the V6 network, where there is now a common idea to continue working with energy sharing between municipal buildings. Among other things, there are now plans for a bathhouse and a preschool in Götene where solar cells at the preschool could help to provide the bathhouse with energy to run the heat pump.

“PowerShare opens up several new opportunities to use solar energy more efficiently and in a way that benefits the entire municipality”, says Simon Holmgren.