The NHL has a costly ice problem — and AI is about to take over arenas to fix it

Energy costs are increasing, and while it may cost a lot more than before to heat or cool a home, they’re basically peanuts compared to operating a hockey arena. That’s why the National Hockey League is bringing in a building automation heavyweight to help.

This week, the NHL announced a new partnership 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—a massive company that provides products and services to many different industries—the “Official Building Automation and Energy Management Partner of the NHL.”

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—Honeywell’s tech, hopefully, will help make it easier to control costs related to energy usage.

“We keep pumping more technology into our buildings, it’s getting more complex in there, we’re using more energy, and having Honeywell help us be more efficient is hugely important,” David Lehanski, SVP of business development and innovation at the NHL, tells Fast Company. 

Developing automation plans at NHL arenas

The cost increases are no joke, either. Greg Turner, chief solutions officer at Honeywell’s Building Automation unit, says that arenas and hockey rinks are facing 11-17% increases in energy costs, and that makes it “pretty hard to sustain.” But Turner also notes that increasing sustainability measures and lowering costs across a spectrum of different facilities isn’t necessarily something that can be solved by “writing a giant check.” Instead, it requires on-the-ground coordinated efforts and expertise.

“This is something that we know how to do, and we’ve been doing it for almost 40 years,” Turner says. “We’ve done this really effectively, and we decided to see how it applies to hockey, and it turns out to be a great partnership.”

He notes that the actual process for how Honeywell will help each facility follows a basic protocol: They speak with the facility’s owner or manager, learn the pain points, look at operating costs and energy bills, and develop a sense of an operating model, which Honeywell’s 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’s demand.

“You really need to learn how they operate their facility, and then you automate it.”

Growing the game

Perhaps the most interesting element of the partnership is what it could mean for youth hockey, which is seeing increased participation, despite relatively high entry costs for families compared to other sports. With that, increasing the number of arenas and rinks available to youth hockey teams, and making sure that they’re operating at a reasonable cost level, is important for the growth of the sport—something that is clearly on the NHL’s mind.

“We have a unique challenge on the youth side that nobody else has. Every town has a football field, a baseball field, a basketball court—the cost to keep those things running is a fraction of what ours are,” says Lehanksi. “If we want more kids to play hockey, we’ve got to figure this out. It’s a major area of need: helping arenas save more money, so they can put more money back into the arena, creating a better environment.”

Again, by helping reduce operating costs at youth sports facilities, the idea is that the cost savings could, in effect, trickle down and help make the game more comfortable, accessible, and potentially, more affordable, over time. It could also lead to the development of a “blueprint” for more efficient facilities, Lehansky says, and more arenas could also lower associated costs for youth hockey players.

“The way Honeywell is going to help is by getting more ice surfaces out there,” Lehansky says, “and there aren’t too many companies that you can talk to in that space.”

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