Commercial, Energy Efficiency, Solar - March 30, 2020
Minor League Baseball team in VA completes green upgrades to stadium
The Fredericksburg Nationals will become the first minor league baseball team to have a new kind of eco-friendly synthetic turf field, in addition to solar power generation and other efficiency upgrades, pending their stadium’s opening later this year.
Before construction began on the stadium in Fredericksburg, Va., the owners met with an informal task force that included the city’s Clean and Green Commission for ideas on green initiatives they could implement.
The owners of the stadium will be pursuing LEED certification after it has been opened for 12 months and plans to install 100% LED lighting throughout the stadium and game field. LED lighting alone is expected to reduce electricity use by 30-50% compared to older ballparks.
Once operational, the parking lot and flagpole lighting will be fully powered by solar energy. The stadium roofs are also designed to support solar panels in the future, and while such a system wasn’t able to be designed before the stadium was originally scheduled to open in April they plan to install one at a later date. The owners plan to eventually make the stadium as solar-powered as possible.
“When we came to Fredericksburg, it was made very clear to us that this was important to the community,” Owner Seth Silber told The Free Lance-Star. “We’re just fortunate that we’re at a point where a lot of this technology is available and feasible.”
The stadium will also feature point-of-use water heaters and a rooftop heating and cooling system to recover energy that would have otherwise been wasted in the air conditioning system.
The $35 million, multi-purpose stadium will feature Shaw Sports Turf’s B1K: Batting a Thousand, a type of sustainable, synthetic turf used by major league teams such as the Arizona Diamondbacks. The turf is meant to save water and eliminate the use of fertilizers and other chemicals.
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