THUNDER BAY — A large-scale electric heat pump and thermal storage facility will soon be installed and piloted at Confederation College.
The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) announced $3.2 million through its grid innovation fund on Thursday to support the project in partnership with the college, Synergy North, Blackstone Energy Services and Powerconsumer — a technology provider.
Through the project, the college’s excess energy will be stored and provided to Synergy North to help during peak demand on the electrical grid.
“It’s a huge step forward for innovation, especially in Northwestern Ontario,” said Karla Bailey, Synergy North’s vice president of system planning, asset management and engineering.
“This hasn’t been done yet in the province and so we’re really hopeful to see the results from this that can be used with other institutions.”
While other utilities have been using customer resources to help with constraints on the grid, Bailey said that the thermal storage the college is installing is unique.
“It’s a sustainable way rather than using natural gas generation or diesel generation — something that emits carbon,” Bailey continued. “This is a low-carbon way of doing that.”
The other special part about the project, she added, is that with Thunder Bay winter peaking — meaning larger loads happen in the winter when people are using their heat — the college can use this solution to help the city during that time, and possibly also bid to sell excess power into the provincial market when there’s a need.
Although in terms of the actual size of the load that they’re contributing, Bailey said it is still fairly small.
Currently, the project, she said, uses one thermal storage tank, but potentially other institutions could also develop them.
“Testing it out, proving that they are willing and they can use it at the right times will provide the opportunity to build more of them,” Bailey said.
Bailey has been involved in the project’s construction on the Synergy North side, working on the aspects where the corporation can access the college’s resources.
Work began almost a year ago and the project’s construction is expected to take two years. During this time, physical construction will happen at the college, and Synergy North will work with Powerconsumer to have its software in place to start testing by the end of 2026.
This testing and verifying of the project will last another year, providing energy to the grid and accumulating data.
“If it went really well, we can come to our regulator and say this worked really well, we want to offer it as a program to more than just the college,” Bailey said.
The project will be really important for Thunder Bay, agreed Michelle Salo, Confederation College’s president.
Not only to show it is possible within Thunder Bay, she added, but also to respond to the city’s energy needs alongside those of the provincial grid and "we want to expand the city of Thunder Bay — there's a growth initiative, so we need energy in order to be able to manage that."
“I really appreciate the funding from the IESO," she continued. "It’s really important in this current fiscal environment that we’re getting support for projects like this, so that we can move forward and … be more financially sustainable as well as environmentally sustainable.”
For roughly three years, the college has been working with partners to determine possible local energy projects. It was also already working on installing heat pumps and upgrading their systems to measure and track energy usage.
Having the project on campus, Salo said, will provide students with the learning opportunity first and foremost, which is important.
Students can see the college’s systems operating in real time, she explained.
“We want to make sure that our students are always connected in some way to our infrastructure in those fields where they’re going to be going and working in, in the future, so having access to real live data is going to be really important to this project,” Salo said.
The college also has been undertaking other energy sustainability efforts over the years, which it advances, she added.
“We’ll use less energy. It’s going to be a cost savings for the college over the long period of time, so it’s a very important thing for the sustainability,” Salo said.
While construction is expected to take roughly two years, Salo said the college is very hopeful it can get the project up and running before that.