A ribbon of glowing Jets-green

shone around the top rim of MetLife Stadium last night. Later, the ring turned big blue for the New York Giants, a nod to the fact that two teams share not only a $1.8 billion stadium but also that stadium's newest gee-whiz feature.

The ring is the work of NRG Energy, the utility that is diving headlong into bringing solar power to the NFL. The company installed solar panels at the home of the Washington Redskins and is developing a display for the Philadelphia Eagles. CEO David Crane says NRG is working with the San Francisco 49ers to plan a solar installation (details yet to be disclosed) for the team's new stadium to be built in Santa Clara, Calif. And yesterday, PM got to see two of the newest arrays: One that provides power and shade for the area around the New England Patriots' Gillette Stadium and the crown jewel: the LED ring around the home of the Jets and Giants in New Jersey, which NRG raced to finish before the start of the new NFL season.

NRG is not a renewable-energy company, Crane says flatly—it's a traditional energy company. "We own a lot of coal-fired power plants." However, "solar is now" is one of the CEO's favorite mantras. For reducing greenhouse gases, he says, "there is no killer tech" right now. But the energy source with the highest ceiling is solar. "Solar is the game changer. Not all renewables are created equal." And over the last two years, his company has turned to football to get that message across.

Tom Gros, President of the company's NRG Solutions division, says the ring atop MetLife Stadium consists of 47 sections and about 1350 total panels. The panels are what's called building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). These panels—hand-built by Atlantis Energy in nearby Poughkeepsie, N.Y.—form a canopy over MetLife's most distant nosebleed seats, which were previously uncovered. And they're largely transparent: the PV element is sandwiched between panes of glass. Altogether, Gros says, the ring can produce on the order of 350 kilowatts, about 25 times what it takes to power the LED ring.

The ring makes for a spectacular view; the mile-long track of 916 LED fixtures is actually more impressive from outside the stadium. Of course, the view is most impressive at dusk and night when the sun has gone, so the ring isn't always solar powered. During the day, Gros says, the BIPV panels produce about 25 times the energy needed to power the LEDs. That excess can go into the general stadium use or back to the grid, since NRG provides MetLife's everyday electricity, and the normal energy supply can light up the ring when the sun is down.

Up in Massachusetts, the Patriots took a different solar tack. The campus that's home to Gillette Stadium also contains a full shopping center. On the roof of a few of the stores, NRG laid out an array that's a little more like a typical solar installation—rows upon rows of snapped-together PV panels (Gros likes to call it "solar Legos") and conduit running the DC power down to inverters below, which will turn it into AC at a loss of about 2 percent.

Combined with some clear BIPV put into a canopy over some of the stores and walkways, the Patriot Place system, NRG says, will provide 1.1 million kilowatt-hours annually. On average that's about 60 percent of the electricity to the commercial center, Gros says.

Interesting as the NFL solar installations may be, we're still far from the day when a football stadium rocking on game day draws most of its power from the sun. First, it's impractical. As NRG's Crane says, he got interested in NFL solar in 2010 when the Philadelphia Eagles' ownership announced a plan to take their stadium off the grid, which was bold but utterly impractical.

"There's no building in America that makes less sense to take off the grid than a football stadium," Crane says. Most days they use little juice, then eight game days a year they can require 15 megawatts or more.

And like any solar arrays, the NFL's are constrained by the realities of energy economics and politics. NRG picked a number of East Coast NFL teams because it already supplies energy in the region, and because the company says it can deliver solar at a price competitive with the Northeast's higher everyday electricity rates. But in the company's home state of Texas, while it sponsors the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans, NRG doesn't provide them solar power because it's not economical versus Texas's electricity rates. And NRG couldn't necessarily offer solar power to teams like the Atlanta Falcons or the Miami Dolphins—they're located outside of its coverage regions. The local utility there would have to agree to net metering and a host of other concerns.

It's also far from clear how much money the teams (and NRG) make on these deals. Neither party wanted to talk numbers on how much these installations cost or how much the teams will be paying NRG per kilowatt-hour versus what they currently pay for power. Owners, such as the Giants' John Mara, only hint that they are confident their long-term power purchasing agreement with the company would keep rates at a locked-in level that is reasonable, especially as compared with the specter of continually rising energy costs.

For now, NFL solar power is more about the message. Patriots President Jonathan Kraft says part of the rationale for his use of solar is to tap the incredible reach of the NFL to spread the word about alternative energy sources. People who come to Patriots Place, whether to see Tom Brady throw TDs or just to shop, will see the solar installations and be able to learn about them, he says. It doesn't hurt the team's public image, either. The Patriots have also daylighted a creek near the stadium that had been buried under a culvert and have installed a graywater recycling system within Gillette Stadium to enhance the Pats' green cred. They're even considering installing a wind turbine at the stadium. "It feels like the right way to do business," he says. "[And] we, by the way, very much like the image of that."

At MetLife Stadium, Jets owner Woody Johnson and the Giants' Mara echo that sentiment. Johnson says it's too early to know what the next stage in NFL solar power looks like—whether it makes sense to integrate solar into the stadium's main power supply in a more substantial way or try to make the stadium carbon-neutral. To him, the ring is "a way to make sustainability visible." He imagines young innovators seeing the ring from afar, lit up like the Empire State Building, and getting inspired. "We don't have unlimited resources. We have to develop technologies that recognize this fact."

Still, these men are competitive football owners first, which explains part of the reason why the Jets and Giants wanted this shiny new accent. "Most of all, I want to beat the Philadelphia Eagles," Mara says.

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