Natural Gas Savings
Natural gas savings
Most arenas heat their floodwater to 140–160°F before every flood. REALice removes the reason for doing that: treated cold water makes better ice than hot. The gas that heated the floodwater is the saving, and for a typical single pad it comes to 330 GJ a year or more.
Where the gas goes today
A flood is around 150–160 gallons. Heating that from a cold supply to 160°F takes roughly 0.15 GJ of gas at the boiler. At ten floods a day over an eight-month season that's about 2,400 floods, or 350–370 GJ of gas whose only job was to warm water that a resurfacer then spread on a frozen slab.
REALice takes the water heater out of the flood loop entirely. The water arrives cold, passes through the REALice unit, and goes straight into the resurfacer. There's nothing to heat, so there's nothing to burn.
Why the percentage depends on the bill
Floodwater gas: gone. If your water heater only served the resurfacer, that entire load disappears. In Caledon and Uxbridge, metered floodwater gas fell to zero in every month after installation.
Whole-building gas: a share. Most arenas also burn gas for dehumidification, bleacher and lobby heating, and tempered water for other uses in the resurfacer bay. Against the whole building's gas bill, the same saving shows as a percentage: 21% at George Bell in Toronto, 79% across the FortisBC pilot rinks.
So when you compare rinks, compare GJ or m³ saved, not percentages. The GJ is what the utility rebates, and what you stop paying for.
What was measured
FortisBC pilot, 10 rinks
British Columbia, full season, 2014
FortisBC funded and monitored REALice at ten rinks for a season. Natural gas for floodwater fell by 79%, an average of 330 GJ per pad. This is the figure our baseline is built on.
Uxbridge Arena
Ontario, twin pad, October 2022 to April 2023
Third-party metering by Elexicon's Envision program: 13,935 m³ of floodwater gas eliminated over six comparable months, worth $6,967 on the gas bill alone. Every month in the report shows floodwater gas at zero. The Township's report to council puts combined gas and electricity savings at $24,460 over seven months.
Elexicon Group, Energy Savings Report, April 2023 (PDF) · Township of Uxbridge, report PR-12/23 (PDF)
Mayfield Recreation Complex
Caledon, Ontario, single pad, annual
Internat Energy Solutions' M&V study found 2,800 m³ of natural gas eliminated: the floodwater heater was no longer needed at all.
Internat Energy Solutions Canada, M&V report (available on request)
George Bell Arena
Toronto, Ontario, single pad, year-round
Enbridge Gas modelled savings of 14,366 m³ a year, about 21% of the whole building's gas use, at a rink flooding every 50 minutes in season.
How much gas does your rink burn on floodwater? Tell us your floods per day, season length and gas rate and we'll show you.
Get a free rink estimateWhat changes the number for your rink
- Floods per day. The single biggest factor. Six floods a day saves roughly half of what twelve does.
- Season length. Six months, eight months or year-round ice.
- Single or twin pad. One REALice unit on a shared feed serves both pads.
- Incoming water temperature. Colder supply water meant more heating before, so more saving after.
- Boiler efficiency. An old, inefficient water heater was burning more gas per flood than a new one, and that's gas you no longer burn at all.
Also on the gas side
Utilities rebate gas savings because they're easy to verify: the floodwater heater either runs or it doesn't. FortisBC and Pacific Northern Gas pay a flat $20,000 per system; Enbridge Gas calculates its rebate on the m³ saved, and in Ontario it can be combined with a Save on Energy electricity incentive. See funding by province →
Gas is half the picture. The other half is what the refrigeration plant no longer has to do once the floodwater isn't hot. Electricity savings →
See how much your rink could save
REALice is already running in 200+ rinks across North America. We help you with the funding applications.
Get your free savings estimate