Super Bowl Power Outage Cause: Media Energy Demand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeWJzny9S_s

The Super Bowl Power Outage was due to media use of energy in posting and working on material just after the Super Bowl Halftime Show. That’s not an official statement, but the observation of this blogger.

The Superdome has not hosted the Super Bowl in 11 years. Over that time, the energy requirements for the media have increased due to the power demands of computers and the use of the Internet to quickly upload content.

As you might guess, that activity happens only at certain points during the Super Bowl: just after the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and after the game itself.

But add another event to that: Jacoby Jones 109-yard kickoff return to start the 3rd quarter of Super Bowl XLVII. The lights went out at 13:22 in the 3rd Q, and, again, this blogger’s assertion is the power demands caused a surge that triggered the power relays to cut energy.

But that wasn’t the real problem: the real issue is the modern power requirements of The Super Bowl may have stretched beyond what the Superdome’s energy distribution system can handle. It’s energy distribution design is more conventional and not at all like that of The Dallas Cowboys Stadium or The Indianapolis Colts Lucas Oil Stadium, venues which hosted the last two Super Bowls. Those stadiums were designed by HKS, and I interviewed one of the stadium architects who had models of both facilties at the 2007 ESPN Super Bowl Party in Miami.

Those stadiums were state of the art. And in 2009, the Super Bowl was played in Miami, which just escaped the giant surge in social media and Internet use by the end of that year.

So today, the demands of 3,000 media in one place at once produce power demands never before seen in Super Bowl history. This is a huge issue the NFL must pay attention to as cities bid for future games. The Dallas Cowboys Stadium provides a model for the future.

Stay tuned.