New York’s new baseball stadiums are more juiced up than a slugger on steroids.
Yankee Stadium and Citi Field combined use enough electricity to power 20,000 homes, twice as much as the old ballparks, Con Ed says.
Citi Field, the smaller of the two, has the higher peak capacity — 11 megawatts, enough to power 11,000 homes. That’s 120 percent more than Shea’s maximum 5-megawatt draw.
The new Yankee Stadium has access to 9 megawatts, enough for 9,000 homes. That’s about twice the power draw of the old Stadium.
Blame the stadiums’ big potential power use on what makes them great — hi-def TV screens, huge scoreboards and extra elevators, escalators and lighting, said Con Ed spokesman Bob McGee.
The Yankees’ new main scoreboard, at nearly 6,000 square feet, is seven times bigger than the lower-tech scoreboard in the old Stadium.
And both new stadiums have plenty more elevators. Citi Field has 11; at Shea there were just four. The new Yankee Stadium has 16 elevators, compared to three in the old park.
Despite the huge power use, the teams insist the grass isn’t the only green thing about the new stadiums.
Citi Field was built with recycled steel and a concrete mix that included coal ash. It’s also got waterless urinals and energy-efficient kitchen equipment, the Mets say.
The Yanks say that their stadium has water-saving plumbing fixtures, and that beverages sold at concession stands will be poured into cups made of biodegradable materials.
The standard for green ballparks has been set by the Washington Nationals’ stadium, which opened last year and won a silver rating from the US Green Building Council — the first major pro stadium to earn such certification.
Nationals Park uses about 15 percent less power than the old RFK Stadium did, thanks in part to energy-saving lighting that reduced peak power usage from 1,293 kilowatts to just 1,011 — a savings worth about $440,000 over 25 years.
Neither the Mets nor Yanks sought Green Building Council certification. The new stadium being built for the Giants and Jets also won’t seek green certification, though it’s expected to have green features.