Creative, not complex

Together with Envari, the municipality developed a strategy to reduce their carbon footprint and improve operating costs by bringing electric boilers into the complex, which was previously only heated by natural gas. Adding electric heat will not only reduce carbon emissions but allow the facility to qualify as a Class A customer in Ontario’s Industrial Conservation Initiative (ICI).

Class A customers benefit from a more favourable rate structure, but the better part is that the electric boilers will reduce the facility’s reliance on natural gas.

A strategic shift.

Let’s back up a minute. Why is a recreation centre the ideal candidate for this type of transformation? Because most rec centres require heating year-round – for the buildings themselves in the winter and for the water used daily in change rooms as well as any pools that need to be heated. In the case of this recreational complex, the project will enable the facility to use electrically generated heat as much as possible throughout the year, keeping it in that Class A range of consumption. But the innovation lies in the system itself.

Working closely with the client, Envari designed a plan to use heat exchangers to integrate the new electric boiler plant with the two existing gas-fired boiler systems: one for the production of domestic hot water and another serving the main heating loop.

But what’s really novel is the dispatch signal tied into the building’s automation system. This tiny controller has a tremendous impact on the efficacy of the system.

By sourcing real-time, hourly information on weather data, electricity and gas pricing, it triggers the system to toggle between the electric and gas boilers based on pre-set parameters. In other words, on those searing-hot summer days when load demands are peaking across Ontario, it automates a load shift from electricity to gas, reducing the provincial peak and fulfilling the criteria for the Class A rate structure.