Qualcomm and OSIsoft are working with the San Diego Padres to reduce the baseball team's utility and water consumption.

The Padres are utilizing Qualcomm's edge intelligence gateways to collect data from critical infrastructure systems and stream it in real time to allow monitoring of utilities and improve operating efficiencies across Petco Park stadium.

“By using the gateways together with the open-data infrastructure, we can see exactly how much water, power and gas each operation uses ballpark-wide and can work with our operators and tenants to manage usage and increase the reliability and overall performance of the venue,” says Randy McWilliams, senior director, facility services for the Padres.

Qualcomm's edge intelligence gateways collect data from infrastructure systems at San Diego's Petco Park. Image credit: "abrowncoat" under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License. Ballparks represent one of the most difficult and unusual challenges for facilities managers. They are very large venues, where the number of occupants can zoom from a handful of employees to full capacity and then back to a handful in a matter of hours. Furthermore, many of these facilities were not built with sophisticated instrumentation and control systems to closely manage water or power.

The gateways connect to sensors and legacy systems throughout the stadium using a broad range of communication methods, including wired and wireless technologies, analog and digital inputs and multiple communication protocols. These gateways acquire, store and stream data in real time—on usage of potable, non-potable and chilled water, as well as natural gas and electricity consumption—to give facility managers and their operations team situational awareness of what is happening in the venue.

McWilliams says increased efficiency relating to energy and water use could reduce the ballpark's operational expenses by more than 25% in the next five years.