London District Energy supplies heating, cooling and other energy services to businesses in downtown London Ontario. With the help of the CHPSOP program, its owner, Veresen, expects to expand the current capacity, approximately 100 MW of combined thermal & electrical generation, by 18 MW.
Plant manager Sean Russell explains that plans for the new facility’s contracted output is 17.9 MW, out of a total rating of 18.68 MW for the machines that were modelled for the project. The remaining .78 MW would go to “station service load”. London District Energy is also planning to export 9 MW of thermal energy in the form of steam heating and chilled water cooling. For cooling, the current working plan includes two 450 ton absorption chillers.
If internal approval is received, the new facility is planned to be built adjacent (across the street) from the existing district energy and cogen facility. The cogeneration facility is planned to be tied to the existing steam and chilled water distribution system and would support recent DE growth, allow for future buildings to be connected and to improve reliability and resiliency for existing customers. The addition is planned to service 50 different steam customers and 9 chilled water customers. Customers include commercial office towers, hotels, hospitals, hospital linen service, Bud Gardens (an arena), City Hall, the London Convention Centre, London Public Library, Museum London, London Courthouse – “You name it!” says Mr. Russell. “Even a Starbucks franchise.”
As part of the grid access approval process, the energy infrastructure company Veresen Inc., headquartered in Calgary, is looking at options that could benefit the local grid such as islanding with London Hydro, so that service could continue in case of a loss of grid power, but at this point nothing has been finalized in that regard. Islanding, black-start, smart grid potential and other considerations remain to be resolved as Veresen and London DE move to detailed design. Other aspects of detailed design include the genset type and supplier.
The project is proposed to be tied to a “newly rebuilt” Nelson Transformer Station (scheduled to be complete end of 2018), which is being converted from 13.8kV to 27.6kV and will be supplying downtown London with power.
The contracted commercial operation date is set for June 2020. “If the project receives final internal approval to move forward, we hope to be in service earlier,” said Mr. Russell. “The current target is December, 2018.”
See also "92 MW contracted under CHPSOP 2 ," in this issue.