INNOVATION November-December 2014

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addition, ADEU has been designed to allow future phases of the development to allow the utilization of several different renew- able energy sources such as open and closed loop geo-exchange, solar thermal, sewer heat recovery, biogas, and air-source heat pump technology.” Every step of the way, the City kept looking at all possible technologies and all the state-of-the-art work being done,” says John Irving. “We continue to do that now for the detailed design of Phase III, which will involve servicing a Smart Centre big-box development with retail shops and restaurants on the southwest corner of the Alexandra neighbourhood. The devel- opment is currently in the design phase and the retail complex is slated to open in early 2016. It’s going to be connecting to the ADEU, but the whole demand profile for those types of build- ings are quite different, so we’re going to be servicing them with air-source heat pump technology, which can capture latent heat from the air, even at temperatures close to zero degrees.” Working to secure a future of eco-friendly, renewable energy and minimize the city’s carbon footprint, Richmond council, senior management, and staff including several professional engi- neers are continuing to implement a progressive Strategic Energy Program and a Strategic Climate Change Program. The City’s goal is to reduce total energy usage from 2007 levels by 10% and achieve a 33% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and an 80% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050. Citywide there are 8,000 units currently planned to be con- nected with district energy utilities, says Alen Postolka. “There’s no question the success of ADEU is propelling us forward in bringing district energy to other high-density areas throughout the city. We are now developing the River Green District Energy project, and that will service another five million square feet of development in the first phase. The utility will use sewer heat recovery as a technology to produce the energy.” The Alexandra project showed that sustainable design doesn’t need to cost more, says Stantec’s Dean Kaardal. “As a society, we don’t need to build the old, conventional, inefficient buildings anymore. We can take the example of the Alexandra project and utilize the earth around us to provide clean, afford- able renewable energy.” v

Weiler Smith Bowers, geotechnical engineers GeoPacific Consultants, general contractors Penta Builders Group and HY Engineering, which was tasked with the off-site civil engineering.” “The sheer scope of the project required many design innovations,” says Dean Kaardal, P.Eng., Vice President of the Engineering Buildings Group at Stantec. “On a traditional project you are usually working within a small boundary for a property but we had to deal with the whole ADEU with several different properties to feed, and with the developers coming in at later stages. So, it was a challenge to envision the end result. “The design required a modular approach to allow for future growth. As the developments grow you can add more heat exchangers into the system to provide more energy. Our mechanical and civil engineering teams made sure the energy recovery and rejection system could be installed on time and on budget. We had to consider the different loads that were going to be on it, and determine, from a business case on through, how much heat you can get and how much you need to deliver.” The ADEU is phased to provide just-in-time connections of utility service to match the speed of development to avoid tying up capital unnecessarily, adds Paul Marmion, P.Eng., Senior Principal at Stantec. “As more developments come on stream, the piping and equipment in the energy centre can be expanded to meet the heating and cooling needs of the community.” Milton Chan says that one of the main issues was to deter- mine how to size the system properly. “With ADEU everything is in a state of evolution. We didn’t want to get too far ahead with the construction of the system and have a huge amount of infrastructure that’s serving only a small piece of the develop- ment, so we had to coordinate the timing. The challenge was to determine how much to build right now and how much to defer to the future while meeting the current and growing energy needs of the neighbourhood.” “It was our privilege to work with the City’s engineers, helping them achieve their strategic goals in a sustainable and environmentally sensitive manner,” says Marmion. “A key innovation was the utilization of a planned neighbourhood greenway corridor as the geothermal field to provide the com- munity with open green space as well as an energy source. In

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