City Wins Climate Action Award for Reservoir No 1 Energy Recovery Facility

Community Energy Association announces award at UBCM

NEWS RELEASE - Distributed September 26, 2014 9:15 AM

Summary

The City of Nanaimo has received a Corporate Operations award for the energy recovery system constructed as part of its Reservoir Number One storage project. The storage facility is required to protect drinking water quality as its new filtration plant comes online in 2015. As part of the building that controls flow into the reservoir, the City worked with BC Hydro to construct an energy recovery system. The energy recovery system handles about 30 per cent of the City's water supply and provides enough electricity for sale to the BC Hydro grid to power about 70 homes. The system was commissioned in April 2014 and since then has generated over 325,000 kW of energy and almost $30,000 in revenue for the City.

Link to Strategic Plan: Water; Taking responsibility to be an excellent municipal government

Key Points

The new Reservoir Number One & Energy Recovery Facility entered full production in April 2014. Since then, it has generated over 325,000 kW of energy.
This level of energy production is expected to generate between $70,000 and $90,000 additional revenue to the City's water fund each year. This will help offset the operations cost of running the water system, as well as cutting green house gasses.
Normal practice in gravity municipal water systems is to use globe-style control valves to control the filling of a reservoir. The valves dissipate the potential energy. In the case of Reservoir Number One, the City inserted turbines to extract the energy, instead of control valves.
The City of Nanaimo and BC Hydro worked together to develop the energy recovery system and the Energy Purchase Agreement.

Quotes

"I am pleased the work carried out to complete this project has been recognized by the Community Energy Association. Any opportunity to generate electricity from existing infrastructure or investments in new infrastructure will always provide tremendous benefits, both in terms of additional revenue and the City's impact on the environment."

Mayor John Ruttan

Mayor

City of Nanaimo

Quick Facts

Using the revenues generated, expected payback on the cost of the energy recovery system is less than 10 years.
The Community Energy Association Awards are offered annually to a municipality or regional district implementing a project or program best integrating energy/climate planning into community or corporate planning.

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Contact:

Bill Sims

Manager, Water Resources

City of Nanaimo

250-756-5302

bill.sims@nanaimo.ca

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