A smart utility system is going to become a big hit for the Petco Park baseball stadium in San Diego. In a collaboration between Qualcomm Intelligent Solutions and OSIsoft, a project is underway to provide insight into the facility’s utility and water consumption, paving the way for smarter use.
The stadium owners, the city of San Diego and the San Diego Padres, are using edge intelligence gateways, which will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. These will collect data from critical infrastructure within the stadium and stream it in real time to OSIsoft’s PI System.Built in 2004, Petco Park seats around 40,000 people.
“By using the gateways together with the open data infrastructure, we can see exactly how much water, power and gas each operation uses ballpark wide, and can work with our operators and tenants to manage usage and increase the reliability and overall performance of the venue,” said Randy McWilliams, senior director, Facility Services, San Diego Padres.
McWilliams believes this system has the potential to increase efficiency enough that it will reduce operational expenses by 25 percent.
Data Can Help Utility Workers Come Up with a Game Plan
With the smart system in place, utility managers of Petco Park can monitor potable, non-potable and chilled water, as well as natural gas and electricity consumption. With this type of data, engineers can then go forward to come up with solutions for reducing the consumption of these resources.
The communication methods used to connect sensors to the edge gateways will include wired and wireless technologies, analog and digital inputs, and multiple communication protocols.
The data is streamed in real time to the OSIsoft PI System and then presented to the end users via OSIsoft’s PI Visualization Suite and analytics.
It is no wonder that the decision was made to implement an Internet of Things (IoT) system that is built on edge gateways. The sheer size of Petco Park indicates that there is lot of data that needs to be processed. Sending it all to the cloud would require a lot of bandwidth or else the system would slow to a crawl. It's more efficient that the processing be sent to the network edge before data is sent to the cloud. This way you only transfer what is needed.
“With our new edge intelligence solutions seamlessly delivering real-time data to an open data system like the OSIsoft PI System, we can create a model for connected communication networks that can be deployed in existing large-scale venues and multi-tenant facilities without the hefty cost of installing new systems.” said Kiva Allgood, president, Qualcomm Intelligent Solutions, Inc.
A Home Run Not Just for Petco Park
There is a high potential for water and energy savings when it comes to sports stadiums. Consumption fluctuates dramatically throughout the course of a game. Petco Park is no exception, with a stadium capacity of 40,000 people—and we all know where they go between innings.
“The Padres’ accomplishments will also provide a guide for others. There are approximately 12,000 stadiums in the world, and many are in regions and cities mapping out plans to use energy and water in smarter ways,” said Martin Otterson, senior vice president of Sales, Marketing and Industry, OSIsoft.
To learn more about projects under way by Qualcomm and OSIsoft, visit their websites.