Advertisement

PunditFact: Columnist claims Dallas football stadium draws 3 times more power than Liberia can produce

 
The peak electric demand of AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, far exceeds the output capacity of Liberia, which New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof called “desperately weak.”
The peak electric demand of AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, far exceeds the output capacity of Liberia, which New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof called “desperately weak.”
Published Oct. 31, 2014

As President Barack Obama and countless public health experts keep saying, "Ground Zero" in the fight against Ebola are the countries in West Africa. In a recent op-ed, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof repeated that cry, saying American military help there was crucial. Left to their own, Nicholas said, these nations have no chance.

"These are lovely countries with friendly people and some heroic health workers, but roads, electricity and other infrastructure are desperately weak," Kristof said. "All of Liberia can produce less than one-third as much electricity as the Dallas Cowboys football stadium consumes at peak times."

A reader wondered about Kristof's claim, which essentially is: The country of Liberia cannot produce enough energy to power one American football stadium at its peak demand.

To be sure, the Cowboys' home field, AT&T Stadium, is no small affair.

The domed stadium seats 80,000 people, has the world's largest high-definition video screen (70 feet by 160 feet), and plenty of air conditioning to match the heat of a Texas autumn. It covers 73 acres, cost a reported $1.3 billion to build and opened in 2009.

Liberia, meanwhile, isn't the biggest country, but still, it has more than 4 million people. Geography-wise, it's the 104th-largest country and about the size of Cuba.

So what do the facts say?

According the U.S. Energy Information Service, Liberia had installed capacity of 197 megawatts in 2011.

That means Liberia, at any one time, can generate 197 megawatts of electricity.

So how does 197 megawatts compare to peak demand at AT&T Stadium? A rock-solid answer proved to be elusive, but we found a reasonable estimate.

We would have clear figures if the Dallas Cowboys would say how much electricity the stadium uses at its peak. They refused. A spokesman told PunditFact, "We don't give out those kinds of numbers."

However, Oncor, the firm that installed the stadium's electric system, provided a helpful clue. Oncor is a Texas electric company, and on its website it boasts about the work its engineers and contractors did for the Cowboys. In that writeup, Oncor made this interesting comparison.

"The stadium, which is the largest domed stadium in the world, uses more power than most medium-sized cities."

An Oncor spokesman would tell us nothing more than that, but we turned to Douglas Gotham, director of the State Utility Forecasting Group at Purdue University's College of Engineering.

Gotham did some back-of-the-envelope math for us based on what we know about medium-sized U.S. cities. He chose Evansville, Ind., with a population of about 120,000.

"The peak demand for the entire utility service area is about 1,500 megawatts," Gotham told us. "About half of that roughly is in the city itself, so we're looking at about 750 megawatts at the peak."

With Evansville being on the low end of medium-sized cities, Gotham said the comparison is close. If AT&T Stadium can use at least 750 megawatts at its peak, that is more than three times what Liberia can produce — if Oncor is right.

"The statement about Liberia is in the ballpark," Gotham said.

Exact figures are not available, but the basic comparison works — as hard as it might be to believe. We rate the statement Mostly True.