Energy consumption evaluation for sports centers: a method based on optimization classes and qualitative dashboards

An evaluation method for sports center energy consumption is herein described. The proposed strategy can be used to estimate energy consumption at early design phase or serves as the baseline for comparison with the real consumption. About 200 sports centers - covering all of Italy - have been evaluated for energy consumption. Sports centers can be grouped into optimization classes based on a number of the saving interventions that have been implemented to save energy. The suitable saving processes are listed below. The consumption indicator of each sports center have been calculated and used in the evaluation model, representing the yearly energy consumption per surface unit of a particular sport structure, per climatic zone and per energy optimization class. The research also proved the non-linear relation between energy consumption and sports complex size. Therefore a scale factor has been calculated for each complex size and adopted. Finally, an innovative qualitative dashboard is proposed. The graphic output clearly links a consumption value to statistic data, showing a comparison with other sports centers data in the same boundary conditions.