Two More Buildings to Get on City’s Energy Grid
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Province’s John Martin, Mayor Lyn Hall and Lakeland’s Greg stewart, show map of energy system
Prince George, B.C.- The City of Prince George’s downtown District Energy System, will be adding two more downtown buildings to the system
The Prince George Courthouse, and Plaza 400, both Provincially owned properties, will be linking up with the City’s system which provides heat fired by biomass on the Lakeland Mill site .
The project is expected to cost about $450 thousand dollars to be covered by the Ministry of Technology Innovation and Citizens Services capital budget . The City will paying about $200 thousand dollars to connect the two buyildings to the system.
The heating system is expected to results in heating savings of about $140 thousand a year for both buildings.
The province will pay the City a cost per gigajoule used to heat their two buildings.
The buildings already on the Downtown District Energy system are:
- City Hall,
- WIDC
- RCMP Building
- Civic Centre
- Art Gallery
- Four Seasons pool
- Coliseum
- Library
- Lheidli T’enneh economic development office
Construction is expected to start by the end of July and be complete this fall.
Comments
With the low price for natural gas, I wonder how much money this system is saving the City. The original costs and savings were based on paying a high price for natural gas. Prices have since plunged, so one would think that the savings would have also plunged. Hydro rates have increased so that would have an impact.
Any chance of the City giving us some up to date information on how well this District Energy System is working relative to the costs of installation, cost of heating, etc; Are we actually saving money??
Just askin.
You’ve asked a good question, Palopu.
The City pays Lakeland about $5.00 per GJ for heat. The City charges $12.00 per GJ for heat.
Fortis charges about $4.72 per GJ.
There is no savings…
A better option is to not use an external heat source at all. There are at least two buildings downtown doing this… Then there is no fossil addiction AND no particulate emissions in the bowl.
Two more buildings off the fossil addiction . Can you see the trend ? Cost benefit analysis wins the day over ideology in PG . Amazing .
Notice its only government buildings, tax payer money. There is your cost benifit analysis
Off fossil fuel bahahaha, guess what the backup is when their taxpayer funded toys don’t work.
If this energy system is such a great idea why are taxpayer funds required?
So we all know PG has concerns with our air shed.. So how do we combat that..by burning more “biomass” what it coming out of the stack(s) ? Into our air shed.. How much does it cost us to run this system? Natural gas is very clean burning.
Why do politicians find it okay to say it will only cost the tax payers so much but never mention the other funding they are getting is also from tax payers, just At a different level.
In the 1990’s the city was trying to rezone all that land to be anything but sawmill. Now they are partners in this enterprise. how the tides change.
Found this information when comparing natural gas to bio mass emissions, quite an eye opener.
ht tps://incineratorfreemecklenburg.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/air-pollution-from-natural-gas-vs-biomass-power.pdf
Does not look good for the bowl air quality from this information.
Knowing that the energy system has natural gas back up does it also use natural gas in stabilizing the biomass burning?
Correct. Biomass increases pm2.5 to the airshed
Natural gas is less than 1 mg/MJ
Biomass is 10-70 mg/MJ depending on efficiency
$140,000.00 of commercial rate natural gas is around 28,000 GJ or 28,000,000 MJ. (200 GJ per $1,000.00)
Attaching these two buildings will increase pm2.5 from less than 28 kg/year to between 280 and 1,960 kg/year
These numbers assume no loss of energy from delivery of the biomass energy
Not so fast Seamutt. Your link conveniently leaves out the heavy metals associated with fracked natural gas. That is the real concern is the heavy metals that are unlocked through the fracking process that are then emitted into the local air-shed.
Biomass has no heavy metals and that in the long term is a huge advantage. Also if the biomass was not used for the community energy system it would still be in the air-shed from beehive burners, so the net is actually less the natural gas, as well as less the amount of a cleaner burn they get with the community energy plant as opposed to beehive burners.
Not so fast eagleone lots of good stuff released by a biomass power plant such as dioxins. Do a search on wood fired or the trendy word biomass power plants.
That’s right eagle . Like radium and uranium . With half lives of 1600 years . When the truth sinks in , the public will be outraged and it will be deemed a crime against humanity .
How about some real info. What is the btu or KW heating load of the 2 new buildings coming on stream.
Saving $70,000.00 per year per building. One has to ask what is the present heating cost of the 2 buildings or does anyone really know.
Really PG district energy system is not quite correct as the city does not own any of the heating plant at Lakeland Mills. PG buys gigajoules of energy from Lakeland mills.
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