Ice Rink Energy: Final Report

Aqeel, S.; Muhammad-Sukki, F.; Ayub, A.; Ali, D.; Sellami, N.; Prabhu, R.

Abstract

This research was carried out to for Inverness Ice Centre Ltd., that holds ice sports/activities in the Highland region. The company consumes high rate of power to operate the facility, about 500kW distributed between lighting, heating, forming ice surface and operating refrigeration equipment. Therefore, this report looks into different aspects for energy efficient solutions, utilizing waste heat, lighting technologies for energy reduction, energy generation from renewable and energy storage. For energy efficient solutions we proposed; Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system to recover the heat from the refrigerator system and feed it back to the centre through heat pipes, Ducted Wind Turbine (DWT) to generate the required power for electrical loads, and voltage optimisation system to reduce the power consumption by reducing the supply voltage. From the heat side of view, an essential need to reposition the existing heaters as they are targeting the ice rink resulting more power for the chiller to form the ice. Additionally, heat from the chiller fan can be used for heat applications by using air- to-air or air-to-water heat exchangers. Moreover, infrared heaters were introduced due to the advantages over the existing heating system, which fulfil the heating requirements for the ice centre with low consumption of power. Lighting technologies with accurate illuminations are crucial in sport facilities; thus, high-bay LEDs and LED floodlights were put forward to replace the existing ones. In addition, sun tunnels and solar light collector were introduced in this report to enhance the lighting indoor. Finally, renewables are promising technology to generate energy for supplying the ice centre; hence, 380W Monocrystalline panels were suggested to be used in series to cover the south face rooftop. In results, the PVs can supply power in the range of 34.2kW - 57kW depending on the utilised area. On the other hand, Inverness annual wind speed is 4.3m/s which allowed a 3m diameter wind turbine to generate 204.13W. Due to the offset effect of solar and wind power intermittency, energy storage is an essential technology to be linked with the renewables to act as a buffer, to change the renewable energy sources from supplier to power producer. Therefore, electrical storage and hydrogen storage were considered. This report looks into the advantages and limitations of four main types of batteries to be used with renewables: Lead Acid battery, Nickel Cadmium battery (NiCd), Sodium Sulphur battery (NaS) and Lithium-Ion battery (Li-ion). However, batteries have limitations in storing limited amount of energy, and storage degradation, that hydrogen storage can overcome. Additionally, hydrogen power storage can be utilised in form of Power to Gas technology (P2G) by feeding it to the grid, Power to Power technology (P2P) by using fuel cells, and Power to Heat technology (P2H) by using Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system.

Citation

Aqeel, S., Muhammad-Sukki, F., Ayub, A., Ali, D., Sellami, N., & Prabhu, R. (2020). Ice Rink Energy: Final Report. Scottish Funding Council

• Report Type: Project Report
• Publication Date: Dec 20, 2020
• Deposit Date: Apr 6, 2021
• Pages: 1-26
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2759339