Project Litefoot

Project Litefoot is an award-winning NZ based charity that uses the concept of sports-based competition to inspire kids to become environmental champions. They operate conservation and efficiency campaigns across New Zealand, helping educate children while actively improving the carbon footprints of sports clubs with the help of superstar NZ athletes.

Project Litefoot had a requirement to be able to characterise the energy use of over 3000 sports clubs across the country, using the measurement of a complex set of energy loads at each club. What they needed was a system where they could gather real-time data, sort it by load type, and be able compare “apples to apples” across different classes of sports club.

Getting results

The Birkenhead Football Club is one of Litefoot’s most active and proactive clients. To track electricty use at their club, Litefoot installed power meters to separately measure power use upstairs and downstairs. A small low-power computer running the SolarNetwork platform, called SolarNode, collects the power measurment data and uploads it to SolarNetwork.

Understanding the club’s energy use from this data-driven process will help inform Project Litefoot on the best actions to undertake to achieve better energy efficiency at the club. One action might be switching to LED lighting, for example. Another might be discovering an unused refrigerator that could be unplugged. Once implemented, the reduction in energy use can be verified via the data being collected, and evident via a reduction in their power bills.

The big vision here is to enable the same type of data collection at a set of clubs across their client base, that possibly use energy in similar ways. By measuring Birkenhead FC as a flagship pilot and solving their energy challenges, Project Litefoot is on their way to making smart energy decisions for sports clubs nationwide.

The result

Litefoot now has real-time visibility into Birkenhead FC’s energy use via interactive web-based charts, and can download the data to use in spreadsheets or reports. By analysing the data collected by SolarNetwork, Litefoot is able to develop a “energy use signature” and identify different aspects of the club’s energy use, such as refrigeration, lighting, and hot water.