Facility Manager Dave Kimel is incredibly proud of his facility in St. Albans, VT. Kimel managed the ice arena’s retrofit eight years ago and although eight years seems like a long time, and there have been great advancements made — and price reductions — in energy-saving features for ice rinks since then, his story is important to tell. That’s because they took an energy use approach to how they retrofitted their arena. Today, the entire facility — much more than just the rink — never runs on more than 165 kW. I think that’s extremely impressive for such a large facility.
Aerial view of Collins Perley Sports and Fitness Center in St. Albans, VT.
The modular concept of the Ice3.
Simple Concept of Ice3
“The concept is SO simple,” he insists, “I don’t understand why a lot of other rinks aren’t doing it. By having a larger number of small units, you have the option of deciding to turn on what you really need. It’s like a three-way light fixture in your house. You can put on just 1, 2 or all 3 of them on depending on how bright you want it. But if you use just one, that’s a third of the cost from turning all 3 of them on. That’s the same concept here. With the Ice3 system, if we ever turn all four of them on, it’s when we’re putting in the ice. Once the season’s underway, we should never have more than two of them going.”
Kimel tells me that taking their ice out is quick. Just three days after their 6-month ice season ends, they hold a big Home Show. And that slab isn’t freezing cold for the exhibitors and visitors as you might expect.
“The same brine that’s refrigerating in the ice season heats the floor off-season. That’s a very efficient way of heating the room.”
165 kW
“We ended up with an indrect system that’s safer and doesn’t use as many bad refrigerants as a direct system does, one that operates slightly more efficiently and at a lower cost than the old system did,” Kimel says. ” Because our rink isn’t metered separately, it’s hard to tell what the exact difference in costs have been, but I can tell you that we have an Automated Logic System (a building automation system) that monitors our electricity use and other things and we run our entire building without going over 165 kW. I know of single sheets of ice that don’t have stadium fields of lights like we do that can’t run on 165 kW.”
Kimel tells me his background accounts a lot for the choices they make for this arena.
“I came to this job from the business world. I’m very bottom-line driven and I do have a personal preference to doing things efficiently and being environmentally friendly,” he says. “I’m not a treehugger first, I’m a businessman first. The numbers have got to work. I can’t throw money away and end up having to charge people more money just being environmentally friendly. It has to make good business sense. And this did.”