Sustainable Stadium

Everything is going green. Trying to conserve, harness, and make the most of our resources is the newest trend sweeping across the world. It was probably a long time coming, and I hope it doesn't turn out to be a fad, but figuring out ways to be self-sufficient and efficient are definitely the ways to go at the moment. A lot of the craze is fueled by fuel itself.

Seeking out alternative energies like wind power, solar power, coal, and my favorite, biodiesel (see Syntroleum), are pushing some of the greatest minds of our generation to the brink. The McKinsey Quarterly, a publication by McKinsey & Company exploring current and future market trends, has a really fascinating article on how money could be invested over the next decade to realistically establish sustainable energy.

A couple weeks back, a buddy and I were standing in the Big House, the appropriate name given to the Univeristy of Michigan's football stadium which has an overwhelming capacity of 107,501, and discussed how the sheer size and magnitude of the stadium could be used to produce something of worthwhile value.

We wondered why it wouldn't be possible for the stadium to essentially sustain itself with the energy necessary to power the lights, scoreboard, and loudspeaker. We figured that you put 110,000 people in one place, you're bound to be able to derive a little bit of energy (at least enough to power those elements).

Anyway, my friend and I were perplexed as to how to harness the energy of the stadium. We figured that the vibrations that people made when cheering would be enough to power some of the things used in the stadium, but how to harness this energy was the true question. At first we talked about turbines, as that is how most energy is harnessed, but didn't figure out a practical application for it. We were pretty much stumped and for some time have allowed our idea of creating a self-sustaining stadium to die.

But then, the New York Times came through (as it typically does), and revealed some of the incredible technological advances that are going on in our world every day.

In the October 23, 2008 Europe Edition of the New York Times, there was an article entitled, "Partying Helps Power a Dutch Nightclub," and seemingly our quest to power the Big House had some shimmering hope. We now had some sort of benchmark, which we could try and follow.

Apparently, a Dutch nightclub has just installed a revolutionary dance floor that utilizes a technology called piezoelectricity to help power the lighting in the facility. By harnessing the vibrations of people dancing on the floor, the nightclub is able to use the energy generated by the people dancing. This video shows how piezoelectricity works and its application in the nightclub in particular:

According to Wikipedia, the most elementary definition of piezoelectricity is, "the ability of some materials (notably crystals and certain ceramics, including bone) to generate an electric potential in response to applied mechanical stress. This may take the form of a separation of electric charge across the crystal lattice. If the material is not short-circuited, the applied charge induces a voltage across the material."

To understand this concept graphically, Wikipedia further presents this image which I think is quite intuitive and depicts the nature of piezoelectricity and why it would be useful in the context of a nightclub or in our case, the Big House.

As you can see there is some sort of crystalline structure that when compressed creates an electrical voltage.

I would love to calculate the potential energy that could be produced in the Big House on a football Saturday, but the Wikipedia article lost me in all of the complex algorithms and mathematical identities necessary to calculate strain, stress, and compliance. My friend who I was chatting with at the football game happens to be an actuarial mathematics major, and perhaps he will be better equipped to do that sort of arithmetic.

According to the New York Times article about the piezoelectric dance floor, the cost of installation was approximately $257,000 which the owner of the club does not believe will be recouped by energy savings due to the inefficiency of this relatively new technology. This is very unfortunate, and will make selling the University on this idea even harder.

Yet, like all technological progress, I assume that piezoelectricity and its applications will follow the guiding principles of Moore's Law, which suggests an exponential advance in the capabilities of a technological process and thus dramatic drops in price and spikes in efficiency.

Currently, the Big House at the University of Michigan is undergoing some major repairs that will increase the capacity of the stadium as well as intensity of the noise. According to the Michigan Stadium Renovation Website, "The expected cost of $226 million will be funded through private donations and Athletic Department resources, primarily the revenues generated by the new seating."

If the University of Michigan is truly still the "leaders and the best," as their fight song suggests, then they will take the steps necessary to make the Big House not only the largest stadium in the country, but the first ever self-sustaining stadium in the world.