31 Oct Case Study: XCEL Energy on Vadnais Sports Center and REALice
October 26, 2019 – The Vadnais Sports Center in Vadnais Heights, MN installed a REALice system for their indoor twin ice arena more than two years ago. Electric and natural gas utility Xcel Energy offered a rebate to Ramsey County to install the energy-saving water treatment system that amounted to just less than 50% of the project costs.
Savings and costs for the Vadnais REALice installation. Project cost and Xcel Energy rebate and bonus amount are in US Dollars, 10,000 therms of natural gas are equivalent to 27,761 m3 or 1,055 GJ of natural gas.
Recently, XCEL Energy circled back to Ramsey County’s Facilities and Sustainability Director, Ryan Ries, to ask him about their REALice experience. We are pleased to share details of that Case Study with you.
Xcel put together a project snapshot to show the costs, rebates, ROI and energy saved. This particular facility is expected to save 10,000 Therms of natural gas (1,055 GJ) and 175,000 kWh of electricity each year with REALice.
To download the case study on the XCEL Energy website, click here.
Utility Incentives
Many Canadian utilities also offer custom incentives that will quicken your arena’s Return on Investment for going to REALice.
Each incentive is specific to each arena, so although Ramsey County received USD $13,285 from Xcel Energy, that number might be less, or more, for your arena.
British Columbia any FortisBC customer running an ice arena can currently benefit from their $20,000 rebate offer.
When we calculate our Rink Savings Profile to show the amount of fuel (natural gas / propane / heating oil) and electricity you will save, we use your data on age of equipment, floods per day, length of season, cost of utilities, etc. to determine your savings.
As a rule of thumb, most public utilities will pay around 10¢/kWh and 10¢/m3 of natural gas based on the first year’s savings — but there are exceptions.
We will reach out to your utilities on your behalf to find out if incentives are available and at what rate — that’s a service we’re pleased to offer!
