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Heat generated at the Kelowna Wastewater treatment facility is used to keep the buildings at nearby Okanagan College warm. (Photo Adrian Nieoczym)
Cleaning the stuff that comes through the sewer system into the Kelowna Wastewater Treatment Facility takes a lot of energy and produces a lot of heat.
But instead of letting that heat just dissipate into the atmosphere, it is captured and piped next door to the Okanagan College’s KLO campus where it used to heat the campus’ network of buildings.
It’s an example of a district energy system and it’s something the City of Kelowna is looking to expand. To that end, it is holding an open house Tuesday evening.
“We want to get input from members of the public and just see what they think about the project and whether they think this is a good idea,” said Peter Robinson, community energy planner with the Community Energy Association, which is co-hosting the open house at the Wastewater Treatment Facility, 951 Raymer Ave. from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m.
It is possible that one day, heat from operations at the Kelowna Curling Club, Memorial Arena, the Tolko Mill, the Sun-Rype plant and the Calona Vineyards facility, could heat downtown buildings.
In the Orchard Park area, meanwhile, RackForce has its data centre with banks of servers throwing off heat that right now just goes to waste.
“That data centre’s going to be expanded and it’s going to be the biggest data centre in Canada,” said Robinson, adding he’d like to see that heat used in nearby buildings.
Over in Rutland, heat from the arena could be used to keep the nearby pool and a neighbourhood school warm.
And the Wastewater Treatment Facility still has energy to spare, which means there is an opportunity for Kelowna General Hospital to hook into its system and reduce its carbon footprint by 5,000 tons of CO2 while simultaneously reducing its heating bill.
There will be technical challenges to installing district energy systems, said Robinson, “but the main challenges are going to be financial.”
It was easy to run heat over to the college because its heating and cooling system was already designed to use heat created at a centralized facility and distributed through a network of pipes. The hospital has a similar advantage should administrators there decide to tap into the Wastewater Treatment Facility.
However, retrofitting a building to hook into a district energy system when it wasn’t designed to do so, is expensive.
“So, with the other projects we’re basically going to be relying on new construction projects for them to be viable,” said Robinson.
Robinson added that there are dozen’s of communities in B.C. looking into district energy systems and that the two Olympic athletes villages in Vancouver and Whistler will both use them.
adrian@kelowna.com
250-575-3517
Tags: district energy systems, Kelowna, kelowna wastewater treatment facility, Okanagan College
