With Stanley Cup Final Set To Begin, NHL and Honeywell Lay Foundation for Energy-Efficient Venues

The initiative is extends beyond the league's arenas to team training rinks, community rinks, and small-business-owned rinks as well

The National Hockey League has never been shy about embracing technology, as shown by its launch of an NHL Innovation Lab at the Prudential Center in Newark last month. Now the league is taking another step with a new relationship with Honeywell that is designed to make not only the league's 32 arenas more energy-efficient but also team training rinks, community rinks run by towns and mom-and-pop businesses, and much more.

The partnership addresses challenges that have been building for years, says NHL EVP, Innovation and Technology Strategy, David Lehanski. We're putting more and more technology into every arena: more cameras, more microphones, more processing, more computers, more everything. It's getting hot in there.

Managing that growing technological footprint efficiently, he argues, has a direct impact on the quality of the game itself. Calibrating all of that to generate efficiencies will not only help the financial model of the arena; it also makes for better ice because we can control the temperature and the environment. Ice can be too hard, he adds, which I never knew.

The deal covers the league's 32 arenas but extends well beyond them. Honeywell will work with clubs on major infrastructure renovations and expansions, coming in, as Lenhanski describes it, with more of a consultant mindset to help teams and venue operators identify where upgrades will generate the biggest returns. Some areas - like the league's servers, cameras, and player-tracking systems - fall directly under NHL control. Others are in the hands of individual clubs or venue operators.

It's all part of what we scoped out and committed to, Lehanski says.

Perhaps the most ambitious piece of the partnership is its focus on community rinks, the grassroots facilities where the next generation of players first learns to skate. With more than 80% of all community rinks in North America older than 25 years, they are in desperate need of a facility refresh to become as energy-efficient as possible.

Honeywell's Greg Turner says the new relationship with the NHL will help improve energy efficiency at hundreds of rinks and areas across North America. The passion is created at the community rinks, notes Juan Picon, president, Honeywell Business Automation. That's where everything starts. Being part of that journey makes us partners in making hockey available for many, many generations to come.

That's where Honeywell's performance-contracting model becomes critical. Instead of requiring facilities to make large capital outlays upfront, the arrangement allows rinks to finance improvements through the energy savings the upgrades generate over time. It's amazing when we see a venue before and after, he says. We can actually help transform the environment. It also creates the fellowship that's going to keep growing this sport.

Adds Lehanski, At the end of the day, on the community side, it's a mom-and-pop business. We don't want anyone to have to take out loans at onerous rates just to upgrade their facility. They should be upgraded so they can put more money back into the business: more free programming, learn-to-play initiatives, leagues, all that stuff.

Honeywell Chief Solutions Officer, Building Automation, Greg Turner concurs with that vision. For smaller community rinks, the challenge is less about amenities and more about survival, especially as energy costs push their operational costs up more than 10% a year.

The smaller facilities are going to be hurt the most by rising energy costs, he points out. In a lot of cases, they will be able to afford to do it through a performance-contracting arrangement that allows them to finance upgrades and use the savings to pay for it [instead of a capital outlay].

The model carries a built-in accountability mechanism that Turner says resonates with facility owners. Very few people just want to write a check. If you say you can operate my facility for 10% less and I'm going to count on that 10% to pay the bill, I want to be in an energy contract where, if you don't make that, you're going to write the check, not me.

The idea that we could work on how to make ice more affordable, more accessible, more secure, was kind of fascinating, he continues. It puts a real dent in your business model when you're facing 11%-17% increases in energy costs every year.

The long-term goal, Lehanski says, is to not only improve operations today but lay a foundation for tomorrow. How can we look at the existing arena footprint and come up with a more efficient model for building an arena in the future, one that makes it a more attractive business for any potential investor?

How Honeywell Makes Efficiency Happen

The scope of what Honeywell installs and manages inside an arena extends well beyond ensuring that the air temperature and humidity are ideal for the surface of an ice-hockey rink.

You have to manage the flow of people getting into the building and out of the building, things like access solutions and making sure they are secure, safe, and comfortable, Turner explains. That includes monitoring the air-conditioning and everything related to the building system. On top of that, we have what we call the fire systems as well to make sure fire life safety [is covered].

Layer on top of that the lighting, the ice plant, the refrigeration systems, and the result, in the form of a data center, is a surprisingly robust technology infrastructure. Honeywell ties all those systems together, Turner says. We combine them all, and we manage, we automate. We can improve and optimize the way that all our systems work together.

That includes responding automa

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