Popular radio host says the Kings’ beam is an energy waste. Here’s how much it actually uses

Shortly after the Kings defeated the Golden State Warriors on Monday night for a 2-0 series lead in the first round of the NBA playoffs, sports radio personality Colin Cowherd suggested Sacramento’s beloved victory beam is a waste of electricity, even calling on California’s governor to investigate.

“Light the Beam feels like an egregious waste of energy,” Cowherd, who hosts “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” on Fox Sports Radio, tweeted to his 1.6 million Twitter followers. “Hopefully @GavinNewsom looks into it.”

Cowherd’s assertion is wildly off-base. Despite the radio host’s remark, the beam only uses about as much power as a typical household appliance.

The victory beam uses 1,800 watts worth of lasers — six 300-watt Laser Space Cannons made by a Folsom-based company called Nu-Salt Laser. That’s about the same wattage needed to run one cycle of an average dishwasher.

It’s an extremely small percentage of the energy used by Golden 1 Center, according to figures from the venue and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Kings arena runs on solar energy

Golden 1 Center is powered entirely by solar energy, a fact that helped it become the first U.S. indoor sports venue to receive LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Two solar arrays make up the arena’s energy source. One, on its roof, accounts for about 15% of the site’s energy usage, according to Golden 1 Center. The other, an offsite array at the SMUD Rancho Seco Solar PV Park, handles the remaining 85%.

About half of the power generated by the Rancho Seco park goes to Golden 1 Center, SMUD said in 2016, as part of a 20-year agreement under SMUD’s commercial SolarShares program. The Rancho Seco solar park generates about 23,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year, meaning roughly 11,500 megawatt-hours go to Golden 1 Center.

The rooftop array at Golden 1 Center adds roughly 2,500 megawatt-hours for an annual total of 14,000 megawatt-hours.

That works out to an average usage of about 38 megawatt-hours per day for the arena.

A megawatt is 1 million watts, so 1,800 watts of victory beam lasers operating for an hour would use just 0.0018 megawatt-hours of energy.

To comply with Federal Aviation Administration airspace regulations, the beam shuts off at midnight. If the victory beam shone for, say, three hours on the night of a Kings victory, that would amount to 0.0054 megawatt-hours.

That’s about 0.014% of the energy used daily by Golden 1 Center — a little more than 1% of 1%.

And that figure takes into account all 365 days of the year. Even if the Kings win the NBA title in the coming months, the beam will still only have been lit 64 times for the season, or less than 18% of the year. That would drop the total to less than 0.003% of Golden 1 Center’s yearly energy usage – a small price to pay for a rallying cry that has united a fandom and city that just endured 16 consecutive seasons without making the playoffs.

Even if the Kings decided to keep the beam lit 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — one can dream — it would still only account for just over 0.1% of the arena’s total annual energy usage.