The Memorial Sports Centre has received an innovative upgrade with the SmartFlower, a giant high-tech flower-shaped solar panel that tracks the sun’s movement throughout the day.
Designed to mimic the natural movements of the sunflower, the SmartFlower solar panel uses a tracking system to keep it facing the sun throughout the day to maximize solar absorption, with panels that automatically unfold as the sun rises and refold as it sets.
“Every morning it’ll open itself up, and it basically matches the angle and location of the sun,” said Infrastructure and Growth Manager Travis Rob. “As the day progresses and the sun makes its path across the sky, it will adjust itself to follow the sun from morning until night. At night, it closes itself back up and puts itself to bed.”
On a clear day, the SmartFlower generates 2 kWh, which allows savings on power consumed at the sports centre.
“All the power that’s generated from the SmartFlower will basically offset what we’re buying from the grid and reduce our operating costs at the sports centre,” Rob said.
“For this time of year, 2,000 watts is excellent, but bear in mind that the past couple of days where we’ve been doing commissioning, they’ve been bright and sunny days, so we’re really getting the best possible output of a solar panel. We don’t really have data yet on how it’ll do on a cloud-covered day.”
The SmartFlower is part of a sustainable power project from the Town. The next part of this effort will be to install rapid electric vehicle chargers at the sports centre.
The new solar panel will not be used to directly power the car chargers as they have a much higher power demand than the panel can generate, and the flower’s location limits it from being connected.
“Fast car chargers use a tremendous amount of power,” Rob said. “We discussed tying it into the chargers or tying it into the building, but given where we wanted to put it in terms of location, it made more sense to just tie it into the building.”
Outside of the SmartFlower and car charger project, Rob said the town is also planning to add more solar panels to the sports centre’s roof.
“We’re about 90 per cent through that design,” he said. “Right now, the design is with the Electrical Safety Authority for their mandatory review, as well as Fort Frances Power Corp. for the connection impact assessment. I’m hoping to have those back by the end of this week, then basically we can finalize the drawings and put it out to tender to construct in the spring.”
The town began installing panels in 2023 because of the high power demands of the sports centre, with it being the most energy-intensive building operated by the municipality.
When completed, the rooftop panel system is expected to generate 500 kWh.
