Avoiding the next big blackout
A new project from Ryerson's Centre for Urban Energy could help us cool our homes and buildings cheaply and efficiently
Robert Hellier thinks a new project at the Ryerson Centre for Urban Energy (CUE) can help avoid blackouts similar to the one that struck Ontario and the northeastern United States in the summer of 2003.
The manager for business development at CUE says Ontario has moved from a province that had the highest peaks or spikes in electricity demand in winter, to one where the peaks are highest in summer thanks to the growing appetite for air conditioning. It's tough on the grid, and can lead to more blackouts.
Enter CUE's Micro Tri-Gen project that began last fall and will continue for another year. Ryerson researchers Professor Alan Fung, Professor David Naylor and Professor Seth Dworkin from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering are developing a system for buildings that is fired by natural gas and uses waste heat to heat and cool buildings more efficiently. In the end, it's cheaper because the system is actually using waste heat that would otherwise go into the atmosphere.
Fung says, "Because it produces electricity, cooling and heating and is sized for small buildings, we've called it a Micro Tri-Gen technology."
This technology could make electricity guzzling air conditioners obsolete, lower water heating costs and provide on-site electricity generation for homeowners and small commercial building owners.
The researchers are working in concert with Union Gas, which helped fund the project; Renteknik Group Inc. which is providing some equipment and expertise; and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), which is providing the research site at the Kortright Centre in Vaughan.
"We're very eager to work with Union Gas, Renteknik and TRCA on this project," says Hellier. "And, the faculty we're working with have a lot of experience to bring to bear on this."
Essentially, Hellier says, you can cool your house and heat your water without using any additional electricity. In addition, the generator creates electricity and the building owner can sell any surplus back to the grid.
To create this Micro Tri-Gen system, the research team is using a special generator from New Zealand - called a WhisperGen Stirling engine - and a Swedish system, a lithium chloride-based crystalline technology from ClimateWell distributed by Renteknik in North America. The CUE research team will combine the two technologies. The generator is already in Canada, and the ClimateWell unit is expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
Once it arrives, the team will install the two systems and make them "talk" to one another in order to work together. That may take a few months although Hellier says they're certain it will work as a system.
"The research is important to our understanding of how to efficiently operate residential natural gas generation systems," says John Overall, manager of Technology Standards and Research at Union Gas Limited.
The testing will take place over the coming year at the Kortright Centre. An environmentally friendly test house - which is half of a duplex called the Archetype Sustainable House - is located there and is already used to test various energy-saving tools and equipment. It is also equipped with a whole host of instruments that researchers use for simulations and measuring what's going on and how well equipment is working.
"This represents the next generation of energy efficient home comfort technologies," says Alex Waters, Kortright's manager.
Eventually, Hellier says he sees this technology being commercialized, that this might be a system down the road that building owners could lease or buy and have installed. It would save owners money and help the electricity grid become more stable, avoiding those summer peaks and flattening out the demand on the system.