The Spanish soccer league is undergoing extensive stadium renovations as Forbes points out in its article “LaLiga clubs boost stadium renovations thanks to CVC funds“.
In some cases, these are small reforms, in others they are complete renovations and even the construction of new stadiums.
Example of Villareal’s stadium renovations
But are they just aesthetic reforms? Are they intended to be more Intelligent and sustainable stadiums?
With these works, they will probably become stadiums with more energy-efficient measures such as replacing LED lights, and video scoreboards with LED technology, but always speaking in terms of energy consumers.
And why not make them energy producers at the same time?
Generally, stadiums have a large surface area on their roofs that could be used to install solar panels that generate energy from sunlight and could self-supply the high energy consumption of the stadiums themselves.
Thanks to the Imageryst product it is possible to calculate, in a simple way, a series of parameters of the stadium roofs such as their surface in m2, the inclination, orientation, and radiation they receive to evaluate which surface is useful for the placement of solar panels and calculate the energy that could be generated in each one of them. This makes the construction of an intelligent and sustainable stadium viable in the shortest possible time and with the highest possible efficiency.
The following example shows the analysis of the roof of the Nuevo Carlos Tartiere stadium of Real Oviedo, we can see how its roof is practically flat (< 10º) and without adjacent elements that generate shadows, the only drawback of this stadium is that it is located in an old quarry at a lower level of the city which generates fewer hours of sunlight, especially in winter.
Example of roof slope data (green color flatter and red color steeper)
Example of rooftop radiation data in kWh/m2 year (brown colors less radiation and yellow colors more radiation)
It is well known that the lawn of this stadium has historically had many problems due to the lack of sunlight because of the shadow that the facade generates on the lawn. At present, there are not so many problems since the lack of sunlight is made up for with sodium lamps, although the energy consumption that this entails must be taken into account.
Sodium lamps illuminating the grass of the Nuevo Carlos Tartiere stadium.
Thanks to Imageryst we can also estimate which areas of the lawn receive more or less sunlight throughout the year and therefore focus the greatest efforts of sodium lamp hours on the areas that receive the least sunlight.
The area with the least incidence of sunlight throughout the year, with approximately 1,500 m2 of surface area, is the area around the goal of the so-called Fondo Norte (in the lower part of the image in darker colors)
In addition to the previously mentioned applications, it is also possible to use satellite images, through Imageryst, to generate a series of indexes and know the state of health of the vegetation, if it needs more or less irrigation, even if it is beginning to suffer from some type of fungus before the disease is visible to the human eye and to be able to anticipate it.
The following shows the state of health of the vegetation in the area around Requexón (Real Oviedo’s sports city) on August 23, 2023:
Google Basemap in autumn
Vegetation indices from the satellite image of August 23, 2023. We can see in greener tones a better state of health of the vegetation, in very reddish colors artificial areas without vegetation and in orange areas of meadows very little irrigated and therefore with a really poor health index. The two soccer fields to the right of the image have the best grass health.
The use of different sources of information on soil observation makes it possible today to make decisions with very important repercussions in economic terms in a multitude of sectors. This article shows a small example applied to soccer clubs and specifically to Real Oviedo.
