The following is an extra entry about our recent visit to the Neighbourhood Energy Utility, and is not intended to serve the purposes of any of the project specific posts.

Discretely placed under the Cambie street bridge, the Neighbourhood Energy Utility would be difficult to notice if you didn’t know what it was. Aside from 5 exhaust pipes peeking beside the Cambie bridge, its hard to tell that there is a large scale energy from sewage facility tucked so neatly below the bridge. But the purpose of the NEU facility is anything but hidden. In keeping with the City of Vancouver’s goal of making all new buildings in Vancouver carbon neutral by 2020, the NEU is an innovative and new approach to the renewable energy field. The first of it’s kind in North America, it was a privilege to have a personal tour with an engineer working at the facility. The tour was comprehensive and provided some background information on the facility and an explanation of purposes of key components. He us through the step by step process of how the plant collects energy and finished with how it distributed to the entire southeast side of False Creek.

Vision

The vision of the Neighbourhood Energy Utility is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by relying less heavily on carbon energy, and instead focusing on thermal energy. This vision is played out in the concept of district energy. In the particular case, the district energy source is thermal energy that is taken from raw sewage and then transferred through the neighbourhood using a clean hot water loop. The goal of the project is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50%.

 How it Works

The system begins with raw sewage entering the facility, where it is filtered to remove larger particles. The sewage is then passed through heat pumps, which use a refrigerant that turns gaseous at low temperatures in order to turn the low energy heat in the sewage into high energy heat. In a separate closed loop, water is heated from the energy of the sewage, and then pumped throughout the neighbourhood. Each building has its own closed loop heat transfer system which provides energy for the building. The water in the NEU system then returns to the facility to be reheated, and restart the process.

 Future

The NEU is only operating at half of its potential heating capacity, and currently has plans to expand its distribution network beyond Southeast False Creek to take advantage of new developments within the area. The city has plans to install another heat pump in the further future pending investments from new clients.

Group photo in front of NEU exhaust pipes beside Cambie Bridge

Heat Exchanger in NEU