Fair to say that this most vital sector of the world’s economy is presently in a ferment, with numerous big questions arising, and none yet fully answered.

So, in its 55^th year, the Global Energy Show Exhibition & Conference should be unmissable. It’s the forum for attendees to engage, network, and learn about sustainability strategies, new cleantech initiatives and decarbonization; attend lively and engaging roundtable discussions and presentations by industry experts and influencers; and meet others to share global energy challenges and solutions.

Discussing this year’s upcoming show, Nick Samain leaves no doubt about how enthusiastic he is. As Senior Vice President for the Calgary location of global exhibitions and publishing company dmg events, Samain says the name of the upcoming exhibition was changed from the Global Petroleum Show to the Global Energy Show in 2020 in light of energy sector changes and the need for cleaner technology and reduced emissions.

“All that put together has transformed the show floor of the global energy show, and it’s done so in some important and exciting ways,” he says.

Driving discussion
The Global Energy Show Exhibition & Conference is North America’s only comprehensive, integrated energy event. Of the promise of this year’s show, dmg events says, “As no single source of energy can meet the increased global energy demand, the Global Energy Show is where Canada demonstrates its vision and leadership by bringing the right people together to meet global challenges with real-world solutions.”

Enormously proud of the representation of oil and gas at the event, the organizers are also aware that large petroleum-based producers with international operations are leaders in a changing industry, shifting their businesses and growth toward sustainable hydrocarbon production and lowering carbon emissions. In Canada, for example, the six largest oil-sands producers created Pathways Alliance (pathwaysalliance.ca), committing themselves to both supplying global energy needs and achieving Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

And it’s no coincidence that the Show is being held at Calgary’s BMO Centre at Stampede Park. Renowned for its oil and gas production, Alberta is also home to the 3,300-acre Travers Solar Project—the largest in Canada—and is seeing considerable investment in renewables.

“Overall, it speaks to the theme of the Global Energy Show,” says Samain, adding that the need to meet energy demands is no longer a “this” or “that” discussion about petroleum versus renewables. “I think we need to recognize that no single source of energy can meet the world’s demands. The world has changed a bit. Does LNG displace coal in other parts of the region, and can we make it as clean as possible in Canada? Yes, we can,” he says.

“And those are the types of debates and discussions that happen at the Global Energy Show, because they need to happen, and they need to happen face-to-face, so this event has an opportunity to influence things like policy and investment.”

With great power…
In Canada, we are fortunate to have an abundance of energy and resources, but the same cannot be said for many others around the globe. The country has a responsibility to be a leader in responsible power production, and the Global Energy Show is the ideal B2B exhibition and conference.

Welcoming representatives from over 111 countries, the event (from June 13-15) is a place to have conversations about Canadian energy and our supply chain with an international audience, and gain—and give—new perspectives that may lead to positive changes.

“It’s three days of really supercharging that industry and that’s how we plan the show, with a day-after approach,” says Samain.

“A year out, we get our governing body members together and say, ‘it’s the day after, let’s put our minds there right now. What’s happened? What were the important discussions? What’s that feeling I‘m going to get, walking the Global Energy Show?’ It’s the next 20 years of energy, and the greatest general moonshot opportunity that we’ve got.”

The entire value chain
Billed as North America’s only exhibition featuring the entire value chain, the Global Energy Show is the largest B2B exhibition and conference of its kind. It’s a place where energy industry pros gather and talk about the global energy transition, the role of all energy resources, and the latest innovations and technologies.

This year, the exhibition show floor will host over 600 exhibitors spread over five exhibition halls and an outdoor zone. Along with the exhibition, the event features a strategic and technical conference, and special presentations like the Global Energy Show Awards, the Plug and Play Innovation Theatre, the Emissions Reduction Theatre, and much more.

Over 30,000 participants are expected to attend, along with 22,500 companies doing business. The 2023 strategic conference will discuss topics such as the vital role of oil and gas in a functioning economy, cleantech investments and renewable energy, and the potential of hydrogen to power our lives. And experts and industry leaders at The Global Energy Technical Conference will discuss the future of energy and technology.

The Top 3 Strategic Conference Panels, meanwhile, will discuss Balancing the International Scales: Do Unsettling Geopolitical Situations Threaten the Energy Transition?; Nuclear, The Myth, The Legend; and The Great Carbon Capture Debate—A Real Solution or Another Way to Extend the Use of Fossil Fuels?

Moderated by industry experts, Interactive Roundtable Discussions will focus on a range of specific technical topics, such as Clean Energy Ecosystems: Is it Possible to Achieve Net Zero by 2035?; New Transformative Tech to Decarbonize the Energy Sector; Scaling and Growing the Hydrogen Market: The Challenges versus the Opportunities; and Challenges and Opportunities for CCUS [carbon capture, utilization and storage] Commercialization.

All sessions will be recorded, and full conference delegates will have access to the library for six months.

“There are two conferences,” explains Samain, “but at that main strategic conference, you can expect premiers to be speaking, international Ministers that regularly speak on the stage; real experts and leaders in industry such as presidents and CEOs of different international companies, as well as leaders here in energy like Dan Balaban, CEO of Greengate. The mix of speakers is back to that matrix of energy, no single source. All roads lead back to electricity.”

Back to in-person
Headquartered in Dubai, UAE since 1989, dmg events is behind 84 events in 24 countries, with some events drawing over 150,000 attendees. When COVID hit in March 2020, dmg, like many large event organizers, thought it was temporary.

In-person, face-to-face events—the foundation of the company—kept being pushed to later dates until 2022, which became the first full year that dmg could again mount all the events in its calendar. 2023 is the second year that dmg is operating on its regular cycle, which is vital for the Global Energy Show, since it attracts domestic and international visitors.

“We need people because we are different from many conference producers,” says Samain. “All of our events always have a large exhibition attached to them, and exhibitors want to see people, busy aisles, and qualified attendance, especially conference delegates. We say, ‘An educated buyer is an empowered buyer.’ So they go to conferences, learn about a new technology, a new market, or investment opportunities, and go into the exhibitions which are really a marketplace for sectors, whether that’s broader energy or something specific like carbon capture or hydrogen, and do business.”

The location of the show, Calgary, represents a new chapter in Canada’s energy sector. Alberta is the heart of the country’s energy sector although it has faced some challenges over the past few years. There is, however, a momentum now in the industry, one creating many dynamic opportunities.

“It’s not quite ground-level, but it’s exploding out here in a great way,” says Samain. “And for anybody who’s in a supply chain, whether it’s manufacturing or allied resources, technology, AI, or anything else, the energy sector has all of that and more, and it touches so many important Canadian industries in the supply chain. I would say, come out and see what it’s all about. It will be worth your while because we are booming in a new era for Canadian energy.”

The post What’s on Show? Just the Entire Energy Value Chain<p class="company">dmg events and The Global Energy Show & Conference</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Named for Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind, Borea began in 2006 and has constructed nearly one-third of Canada’s renewable energy projects, leading the charge in this necessary transition.

Over 70 large-scale projects, comprising over 6800 MW of completely renewable energy, have been completed or are in process.

Borea’s staff boasts over 200 skilled and experienced professionals, with an estimated five hundred site employees across Canada. Thanks to its experience and ability in renewable energy, the company can focus its skills on bringing cost-effective, turnkey alternatives to move the nation’s entire energy grid forward.

Putting the ‘new’ in renewable
Despite the pandemic, Borea’s mission to “deliver renewable with care” is moving ahead without interruption. Borea is using new technologies to improve renewable energy as well.

A major recent example is the Suffield project in Alberta, completed in October 2020. The plant utilizes both bifacial panels and solar tracking technology, generating more power in a smaller space compare to a monofacial panel and fixed tilt racking system.

The union of these two technologies heralds a bold new development in solar energy and may prove instrumental in future plant design.

Suffield’s location in Canada’s Energy Project is no coincidence. Although Canada’s Western provinces are facing a moratorium on coal-fired power plants, they have a far greater resource available; thanks to the flat terrain, they boast the sunniest weather in Canada.

Alberta alone enjoys an average of 1,900 hours of sunshine in the north and 2,300 hours in the south, making it the nation’s sunniest province—and a natural hotbed of solar development.

The Suffield project, boasting 90,000 solar panels organized into ten blocks, will help Canada move down the road toward its renewable energy future and it demonstrates bold new technologies as well.

As their name implies, bifacial solar panels display photovoltaic cells on both sides, substantially increasing their output capacity. But more practically, the bifacial panels mitigate the blockage caused by accumulations of snow. This technology significantly improves the reliability of the solar farm during the frigid winter.

Making light of snow
With many types of solar panels, snow accumulation can at the very least necessitate tedious cleaning, and potentially take whole power plants out of commission. But with bifacial technology, power can still be generated on the panels’ reverse side from sunlight, even from the light reflected off fallen snow.

This advantage provides enough power and heat through the power generation process to melt the snow and hold power generation steady.

Project Engineer Moran Wang explains that as our planet faces the extreme weather that will result from climate change, it will be more essential than ever to maintain a resilient power grid during these events—and bifacial technology can help provide that.

But the bifacial panels are only one half of the Suffield project’s new advantages. Panel tracker technology, which adjusts the panels so that they remain permanently perpendicular to the sun on a single axial, helps the panels maintain constant optimal power production. The result is that their output is far superior to static panels, which in comparison enjoy full sunlight only for a limited time each day.

The second function of the solar tracker is to facilitate the snow removal process. Wang explains that, “If we detect snowfall, the panel will be triggered into a ‘snow-dumping’ mode. That makes it more reliable, in the sense of facing a more extreme environment.”

Tracking technology and bifacial panels could produce as much as 30 percent more energy than traditional panels. This helps achieve more power production in a similar footprint than monofacial with fixed tilt racking.

Or as Wang prefers it, “To achieve the same amount of energy, you have a smaller footprint.”

Bird’s eye view
As project engineer on the Suffield project, Wang also oversaw development of the plant’s weather station, Suffield’s eyes and ears, plus another innovation: an aerial drone outfitted with infrared cameras.

“It’s a huge asset,” says Wang, who pilots the drone himself. The bird’s eye view can highlight panel problems instantly, saving time and money during diagnostic procedures.

“We used to spend a huge amount of money to call in actual aircraft with human pilots and human camera operators to do this kind of service,” Wang recalls. “Now, we can use a tiny little drone operated by someone on-site.”

With the success of the Suffield project, Wang says he believes the next step in renewable energy is increasing energy storage capacity and reliability; keeping the power flowing so energy grids don’t need to fall back on fossil fuel backups.

“I think one missing piece of the puzzle is making it more reliable,” he says. “From there, we can only improve it.”

Advances in battery technology can ensure wind power and solar continue supplying grids even during night hours or inclement weather, bringing renewable energy more in line with Canada’s ever-increasing energy requirements.

But while the Suffield project highlights Borea’s embrace of new ideas, it is but one of the company’s recent projects.

In Saskatchewan, approximately 10 km south of Herbert and approximately 40 km east of Swift Current, the Blue Hill Wind Energy Project is a 175 MW facility comprising 35 wind turbines with a capacity of 5 MW each. This project called for careful planning, as environmental constraints and hot afternoon temperatures presented some unique challenges, which Borea rose to meet.

Carbon-neutral coming
As Borea continues to advance these renewable energy projects as well as the relevant technology involved, the company is still committed to building a carbon-neutral energy grid in Canada.

“I do think renewable energy is the way of the future,” Wang says. He adds that although wind and solar power are hardly cutting-edge ideas, it is only recently that they have become really practical.

He agrees that with the additions of bifacial panels and tracker technology production and implementation costs may increase, but he argues solar technology is still very much an industry in its infancy.

“With everything in human history, we have to let it grow,” he says. “I’m proud to be at the forefront of this.”

The post Innovation in Alberta: Bringing New Technologies to Solar Power<p class="company">Borea Construction</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

In recent years, the decline of the pulp and paper industry has had a devastating effect on the forestry economy across Canada, but particularly in Québec. The provincial government is actively seeking innovative alternatives, and wood pellet production has become a key consideration for the future of the forestry sector.

Wood pellets are an organic biofuel and are made by compressing sawdust into small granular pieces that can be burned in a furnace to generate heat, and this can also be converted into green energy to generate green electrical power. This process emits fewer pollutants when compared to other forms of combustion heating, and wood is preferable to many conventional, non-renewable resources as trees can be regrown. La Granaudière is a perfect test case.

The village of Saint Michel des Saints is located on the southern edge of an immense forest, and it has a long history in forestry, lumber, and wood processing. In 1989, a wood processing company came to Saint Michel des Saints looking for a place to build a new facility, and the region became home to an oriented strand board (OSB) mill that employed just over two hundred local residents and produced roughly 500 million square feet of OSB annually.

The community has a workforce with a great deal of expertise in these fields, but in recent years, the decline of the pulp and paper industry has created instability in the local economy. Rising wood and fuel costs, combined with a steep decline in the price of OSB put the company in a poor enough position that it was forced to shut the facility down at the end of 2007, and an adjacent sawmill owned by the same company was sold off.

A mix of hardwood and softwood is harvested from Québec forests every year, and traditionally, the hardwood would be sold primarily to customers in the pulp and paper industry. As that industry continues to decline, the Québec forest ministry is left uncertain about what to do with the extra hardwood stock. To protect the sustainability of forestry operations, the policy of the ministry is to only provide permits to wood harvesting companies if there is a designated application for the entire harvested crop of trees.

As a result, large portions of the hardwood forests that would have previously been collected are now over-mature and beginning to degrade. La Granaudière will help to solve this problem by creating a new application for that crop. “They call that the frozen forest because there are no permits for how to use that wood, so we are going to defrost those over-mature areas. Then we will be participating in the sustainability of the forest by reducing emissions of GHG (greenhouse gases). To a certain extent, we are the test case for the government of Québec,” said La Granaudière Project President and Chief Executive Officer Yves A. Crits.

This project will also help to improve sustainability by providing an application for branch waste. Traditionally, tree harvesting resulted in branches being left behind on the forest floor. As they decompose, a great amount of carbon is released into the surrounding environment. La Granaudière has plans to harvest those branches so that they can be processed into wood chips. “By reusing forest chips, we are going to provide a use for low-value wood, reducing even further the impact of GHG emissions and improving further the sustainability of the forest,” said Yves.

More than a decade after the Louisiana Pacific OSB plant closed down putting more than two hundred people out of work, La Granaudière has demonstrated a plan to revitalize the local economy and community. It will be bringing approximately fifty new jobs to the area within the production plant itself and 180 total jobs including forestry operation and logistics.

La Granaudière is located on a four-hundred-acre plot of industrial land that is 1.5 kilometres from the nearest home and four kilometres from the local sawmill, with direct access to logging roads. This means that the facility will not only have a highly-skilled workforce, but it will be connected to incoming transport forest routes for renewable, competitively-priced feedstock both as raw logs from the forest and residue from the local sawmills.

As well as the proximity to logging roads for incoming raw material, Saint Michel des Saints is also an ideal location for outbound transport. The facility is located near a deep-water port on the St. Lawrence River with a shipping route connecting it to the European market. A dedicated fleet of trucks will run continuously transporting pellets between the plant and the port.

In Québec, the independent chief forester is in charge of determining the maximum sustainable volume of wood that can be perpetually harvested, and the forest ministry is then in charge of portioning that harvest to companies under supply guarantees. The ministry has granted La Granaudière a right to cut hardwood for approximately 75 percent of its needs. This agreement enables the developers to offer supply chain and competitive price security to its customers by also mitigating take-or-pay risk.

After five years of in-house development, the project began at the end of August 2019. All of the engineering, procurement, and construction contracts were already signed and activated immediately at financial close. Three contractors: Québec City-based Shuot Inc., Player Design Inc. of Maine, and Law Marrot Milpro from Sainte Hyacinthe, Québec were all hired to work on various aspects of the project and broke ground last September. Due to the thorough preparatory planning, work is now moving swiftly, and the facility is expected to be at starting capacity by September of this year and at full production by 2022.

One of the most significant difficulties facing the La Granaudière project is finding sufficient manpower. Currently, Québec’s unemployment rate is below five percent, which is the lowest it has ever been since the statistics were first compiled in 1976 and lower than any other province, and this has made finding qualified labour a challenge for the company.

The project developers have devised an innovative solution to this problem. “We are going to bring back the people who had to leave to find work outside the village when the Louisiana Pacific plant closed down in 2007. We are going to increase the quality of life for those people by having them come back home to where they were living before,” says Yves.

The La Granaudière facility will have the ability to process a range of raw materials on-site into four grades of wood pellet products. It will de-bark raw logs, chip branches, and compress residues from sawmills. For home heating, it will offer a premium quality pellet that generates very little ash. For district heating, it will offer a secondary, low-to-moderate ash grade product. Finally, for industrial power generation, it will offer two grades of moderate and high-ash pellets. All of these products will receive comprehensive screening to ensure that they meet the quality standards demanded by customers and work toward achieving Sustainable Biomass Program and ENPlus certifications.

As the declining pulp and paper industry brings ongoing economic uncertainty to many regions in Québec, the La Granaudière project is on track to give new life to the forestry sector. “There are two major activities in the village of Saint Michel des Saints: tourism and forestry. We are going to revive the village by recovering the prosperity of the area,” Yves stated confidently.

The post Revitalizing a Community With Renewable Energy<p class="company">La Granaudière</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

And as Sascha Deri, Co-founder and CEO of altE Store, sees it, “It’s far easier and more affordable for us to take care of our own planet than trying to force some other planet to be hospitable to humans.”

True to his word, Deri is doing his part. At altE, a Massachusetts-based company that designs and sells DIY solar power systems and renewable energy products, Deri is committed to a greener future. His team is making clean energy generation more accessible and affordable for homeowners and businesses.

A world together
With his ideals he is in good company. In a pretty-well unanimous push by global leaders to be good to our home planet, practically every country on earth has joined the Paris Agreement on climate change to achieve carbon neutrality – or “net zero” emissions – by 2050.

Those greenhouse gas emissions will continue, but they’ll be balanced by absorbing an equal amount from the atmosphere. This way, climate change won’t see temperatures rise to levels that threaten people’s lives and livelihoods, and to the point of no return.

As it is, India, one of the world’s most populous countries, is already facing rising sea levels, melting glaciers and extreme weather events. Climate refugees may soon be a reality.

Green mindset
A greener world is a mindset Deri embraced early on, growing up in a remote cabin in Maine without running water or electricity, completely off the grid. He remembers his dad building a solar air heater to help heat the cabin that relied on a wood stove, and his parents bringing in water from a nearby spring in the forest to heat up for his bath.

(Now he’s in a suburban house where he says he prefers hot showers and won’t go back to compostable toilets.)

The absence of video games and lack of screen time didn’t have a negative impact on his youth. Instead, the challenges of self-sufficiency fired him up in a good way.

“I have a real passion and curiosity for the universe and how it works,” he says. His second business is a rocket company that develops launch vehicles powered by bio-derived, non-toxic fuel.

“Growing up, I developed an appreciation for nature and it put a heavy bias on how I conduct my own life and what I see as responsible.”

It’s that sense of responsibility he wants to see others adopt, with ease and with the right tools for powering everything from their home appliances and electronics to business computers and the office HVAC.

Bringing the right tools
“I wanted to find a way in which technology could benefit humanity and our planet,” he says. With degrees in physics and electrical engineering, he co-founded altE in 1999 and saw the company grow 50 to 70 percent in the first few years (head cheerleader and first salesperson was his father.)

Back then, solar and wind power weren’t widely understood and he had to tackle a lot of myths in bringing the message of how clean, alternative power can be stored and why it makes sense. Today, he’s still producing popular how-to videos on YouTube for the company’s customers and wholesale clients around the world.

“The cost of solar panels and the systems have come way down,” he says of the numerous benefits for the pocketbook and the environment.

In the early 2000s, you would need to spend $50,000 to $60,000 on an independent system and live very frugally off the energy. Whereas today, you could spend $20,000 or $30,000 and almost do nothing differently in terms of your power consumption, although Deri would like to see people reduce demand and live more sustainably.

“So if you look at it as a way of making a future purchase on your electricity, at a certain point it’s paid for itself and it really becomes close to free electricity, except for maintenance costs of the system. It’s a great way to invest in your future. You’re going to need electricity down the road. Whereas, when you buy a property or a car, you don’t know if you’re going to need it and you don’t know what the return on investment is going to be.”

A few months ago Deri installed solar panels on his own house, which now cover 80 to 90 percent of his family’s power needs – a significant boon when you consider that residential electricity rates in the U.S. are expected to rise by 1.3 percent between 2021 and 2022.

KiloVault technology
On that note, his altE team has had a hand in introducing products like the KiloVault range that uses lithium iron phosphate battery technology for energy storage. These unique systems provide higher current and peak power ratings for demanding applications like clothes dryers and electric water heaters and will charge your electric car. Bonus!

The company also offers portable energy-storage units and handy wall-mount units like the popular KiloVault HAB series that offers a 7.5 kilowatt-hour battery in a single unit along with built-in WiFi for smart performance monitoring.

The advantage here is that instead of sending solar power produced during daylight hours to the electrical grid, these hybrid systems can easily store the energy produced for flexible use.

“We’re finding more and more customers are choosing to have their own lithium storage-battery bank in their home. So they’re able to store any excess energy and use the electrical grid as their backup power system.”

Banking on batteries
Some customers have moved completely off-grid and rely on renewable energy power and storage, a move that’s gained momentum during the pandemic. In fact, altE has seen business thrive as people re-evaluate their lifestyles and become more environmentally aware.

And as power blackouts become more common – through the knock-on effect of climate change, more destructive storms, and toppling trees taking out power lines – having a battery bank makes a difference.

“When my neighbors have to go start up noisy, smelly generators to get the power back on, we don’t even notice it because there’s just a flicker of light for a second,” Deri says. “Sometimes we don’t even know that a blackout has occurred.”

Another evolution in renewable-energy systems that makes them even more cost-effective is that you don’t have to start with a battery-based system that adds to the cost. You can begin with solar panels and add batteries later when battery system prices drop further, as they likely will.

All in all, Deri feels his company is an integral part of helping people navigate the future of power generation – which may look a whole lot different from today’s.

The cloud in our future
“Eventually we will see the electric utility grid go the way of the internet or computers to cloud computing,” he says. “I think the way forward is a distributed network where we’ll see people producing power independently, getting to the point where everybody has an intelligent enough system where we are like a gigantic cloud computer.”

He envisions a day where every home is generating electricity and is interconnected. When a home requires power to do the daily chores, like vacuuming or dish washing, it would draw on its own smart systems. Then when additional power is needed for high-demand things like air conditioning or swimming pools, it would seamlessly draw from a home around the block, for example.

This system would be intelligent, efficient and far less prone to the system-wide outages experienced by grids conceived and developed in the early 1900s.

“We have these gigantic central sources of power that are very expensive and where half the power is lost in transmission as it is being transmitted halfway across the country or even halfway across the state,” he says. “So not only does a home-based system reduce the waste, it creates an incredibly robust network.”

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There are currently 30,000 earth energy installations in Canada. This is equal to replacing 50,000 conventional cars with electric, planting 19 million trees, or eliminating the need for a 130-megawatt power plant or one million barrels of imported crude annually. Just imagine the potential impact if this was the status quo.

Geoexchange systems only require a small amount of electricity to operate the refrigerant compressor, ground loop pump and fan, which reduces demand for electricity by nearly one kilowatt per ton capacity and can result in 25 to 50 percent lower energy costs compared to conventional HVAC systems. By eliminating the need for fossil fuels, significantly fewer emissions are generated.

If that’s not enough to sell you on geothermal, these systems also boast the lowest life-cycle cost of any heating and cooling system. The mechanical equipment lifecycle exceeds 25 years and overall maintenance, repair, and operational costs are generally less than conventional HVAC systems, despite offering occupants a greater degree of comfort year-round at lower, more predictable monthly rates. More impressively is the below-ground infrastructure itself, which could last beyond life of the building.

While the advantages are clear, up front capital costs associated with installation can be disadvantageous, however the initial investment can be paid back in as few as five years. Especially with a partner like Geosource Energy on your side, this doesn’t have to be a major source of concern.

Since 2004, Geosource Energy has been a champion of geothermal in Canada, offering utility grade construction services and best-in-class drilling. They provide various project delivery models for geothermal systems from construction through to Design-Build-Own-Operate-Maintain (DBOOM).

Through the DBOOM model, a long-term service agreement is put in place which provides unmatched customer service and system management throughout a project’s lifecycle.

Geosource acts as a technology and performance guarantor which is made possible through the creation of an energy partnership. Clients experience a peace of mind and operational stability, as Geosource bears the capital costs across the life of the contract – usually a term of 30 years.

“With a third-party utility bearing the capital cost of that system,” Adam Alaica, Director of Engineering and Development says, “it allows for the capital burden to be taken off of the developer, and through the service agreement it is converted to an operating cost for the end-user.”

Geosource enables this capacity via a partnership with Oakville Enterprise Corporation (OEC), a municipally owned energy and infrastructure company that has an established presence in the geothermal market. Together they bring 30 years of experience and over 300 projects delivered, as well as extensive technological capacity and resources that can better serve client partnerships.

Jennifer Burstein, Vice President of Construction at Collecdev, a developer that has completed nine towers with Geosource Energy to date, provides some insight into the partnership. “Geothermal was an easy decision for us. As one of Collecdev’s corporate pillars is sustainability and environmental stewardship, geothermal was, ‘Simply the right thing to do.’”

Burstein adds, “It just felt natural when they approached us and offered us an opportunity to enter into the space of geothermal. It made sense that they would take on the entire project of geothermal. So not only the vertical drilling, but also the connections, the mechanical systems, and the engineering and project management that goes along with it as well.”

Geosource Energy drills and installs one hundred percent of its own geo fields. It handles all of the technical and geological considerations to support the energy side of a project, freeing up the developer to oversee the real estate aspect, which makes for an ideal partnership in the development space, especially when partners are engaged early in the process.

“Early engagement is critical to success on any project,” Alaica believes. “From a new construction perspective, it is the ideal scenario to design geo into a building from its conception. This is even more critical when the geothermal infrastructure is sited below the building footprint, which is common practice in most facilities.”

Early engagement doesn’t necessarily mean geothermal needs to happen first. Collecdev employed Geosource Energy on the Westwood Gardens project in 2018, which had multiple trades on site at the same time. The space allowed Geosource to drill the bore field in tandem with other onsite activities, the coordination of which was seamless.

Building retrofits are possible, but they are not without their challenges. There may be challenges integrating the new system with legacy facilities and mechanical distribution systems. In these cases, detailed due diligence is required to assess the project viability and may result in the need for deep retrofits, which may come at a far greater cost up front.

Alaica explains that where there is a lack of space in higher density communities, “Geosource has innovated our construction and implementation methods, leveraging things like angle drilling. This is actually something we’ve done with Collecdev in the past, and it can be done for retrofits and new buildings where there is limited space available.”

The project with Collecdev which he was referring to is described by Burstein as a “retrofit-esque infill project, a two-tower new build which was integrated into an existing residence that was about fifteen years old. They deployed this angular vertical-drilling mechanism which allowed us to take a very small portion of land and drill a large amount of loop space at an angle.”

Another advantage of geothermal is flexibility from an architectural standpoint, which is particularly useful for historic renovation projects. Geothermal mechanical rooms are smaller and can be tucked away in lower value areas such as underground parking levels, with no need for unsightly equipment on the property grounds or the roof. Geosource’s strategic alliance with industry leading fluid flow experts, Armstrong Fluid Technologies, ensures that all hydronic equipment and controls used in their geothermal mechanical stations compliments the best-in-class installation on the ground side. This ensures the preservation of a project’s historical integrity while ensuring the most future-forward innovations in space heating and cooling are utilized.

Geothermal can have the greatest impact on multi-residential, commercial, and institutional projects, especially from a cost and performance perspective. For instance, if all the schools in Canada that require replacement of their heating and cooling systems over the next ten years invested in geoexchange systems, energy savings could exceed $1 billion, and the environmental impact would be immense.

Despite its proven viability and the potential of its impact, geothermal only represents five percent of real estate market share in Ontario. This is due in large part to an unfavourable spark spread. Low gas prices make the shift to electrified systems a harder sell, especially where there is a lack of political will, a sense of market inertia, and the need for capacity building on an industry level.

“One of the key challenges for the industry at large is trying to create this renewed groundswell and create political will to really shine a light on geothermal as the leading, and most credible way to help achieve low-carbon, net-zero community aspirations,” explains Director of Marketing and Sales for Geosource Energy, Darryl Chow.

All levels of government have a role to play to ensure that environmental protection is legislated, and that carbon-intensive energy resources continue to be taxed appropriately, while offering incentives up front that can help offset the higher installation costs and encourage the adoption of greener alternatives.

From Alaica’s perspective, “Helping bridge the incremental cost of a higher performance building is the key. If there is any way to allow the development community to reduce those incremental costs, this will help drive the business case for a higher performance building; this is exactly what the geothermal third-party utility model does.”

The construction industry is historically one of the slowest to evolve. There is a commitment to tried and true construction methods, despite the increasing availability of viable alternatives that improve performance and sustainability.

However, as municipalities continue to establish green building standards to help achieve lower emissions targets, the construction industry will have no choice but to adapt to a cleaner, greener approach to design and construction. Geothermal will be an important part of the overall solution.

“Toronto is a great market for understanding how the municipalities can drive change in the building sector, specifically. With the introduction of the Toronto Green Standard, the city is showing leadership in establishing a more prescriptive guideline around energy and carbon performance of facilities, which is a step in the right direction,” says Alaica.

Sustainability is nothing without collaboration, and in the case of green construction, it will require a multifaceted effort of industry professionals, government representatives, and education leaders to ensure the industry has the capacity to support growth in demand. This is particularly true of training what Chow refers to as, “the next generation of sustainable green construction-trades people.”

Fleming College has launched a first of its kind geothermal program to provide a combination of hands-on training in drilling, installation, repair, and maintenance of geothermal systems which will address a growing need for industry accredited professionals.

To support these ends, Geosource Energy created the Sustainability and Renewable Energy in Construction Student Award through the Tridel Corporation’s BOLT Charitable Foundation to encourage students in the field and provide mentorship. As Chow puts it, “We really do have to equip our future workforce with the right opportunities so they can get into this game to put not just Ontario, but Canada on the map as a global leader in the green construction industry.”

As a constant champion of geothermal, Geosource Energy supports Workforce 2030, a coalition of the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) that is dedicated to fast-tracking workforce growth and building industry capacity overall.

In partnership with the CaGBC, Geosource Energy will be convening an expert panel of key industry stakeholders via an interactive webinar that will serve as a masterclass in geothermal heating and cooling. They hope that by having these conversations with individuals involved throughout the design, construction, and operation of buildings, convenings of this nature can break down barriers to the implementation of critical low-carbon technologies like geothermal. The Drilldown: Masterclass in Geothermal Energy is scheduled for April 20 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern via Zoom.

Tune in to learn more and see for yourself how leaders like Geosource Energy and Collecdev are embracing low-carbon alternatives like geothermal for a greener future. The market is ripe with potential, and geothermal is a business decision that can improve lives, save money and the environment, while improving the bottom line.

The post Things Are Heating up For Geothermal Energy<p class="company">Geosource Energy</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Clean energy developer Grasshopper Energy Corporation currently owns over $1 billion of assets across Canada, the United States, and Japan, with a development pipeline of $6.5 billion. The company is actively developing projects in core solar markets throughout these countries and is continuing expansion into targeted markets like Brazil, Italy, Vietnam, and Australia.

The company has developed, constructed, and managed over 4000 solar residential projects and 200 commercial projects in Ontario alone, effectively employing thousands of people without relying on government assistance to fund its operations.

Grasshopper Energy was founded in 2007 by Azeem M. Qureshi, a mechatronics and artificial intelligence specialist who previously advised Fortune 500 companies on how to optimize their business process management. Over time, he noted increasing interest in corporate social responsibility in the industry but felt that companies were treating the concept as a trendy, inconsequential part of their business, instead of an integral aspect of their operations. Quershi decided, upon leaving this advisory position, to form Grasshopper, a company that would embrace corporate social responsibility at a fundamental level.

The initial vision for the company, Quershi says, was to “take the complicated patchwork of sustainability incentives that were being offered at the time by federal, provincial, and local governments, and ensure they were conveniently and efficiently delivered to the public.” Grasshopper also performed energy audits for the Canadian National Railway and in the residential sector, where the company would evaluate a building’s overall efficiency and suggest ideas of how to make it greener.

Over time, Grasshopper’s business shifted its focus to developing solar projects at both the micro and macro levels. The company sought to set itself apart from others in the sector by offering a unique combination of expertise in the
technological, regulatory, and finance aspects of solar development. Grasshopper’s Senior Vice President of Global Government Relations Tudor Ulianovschi asserts that, “Our ultimate goal is to accelerate the fight against climate change by reducing the carbon footprint of companies around the globe, and Grasshopper has been incredibly successful in that regard.”

In the last year, Grasshopper has joined the Ontario Energy Council and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) – the national trade association of the U.S. solar energy industry. The company has also invested in a large portfolio of solar projects throughout Pennsylvania.

Ulianovschi proudly touts the company’s work with the United Nations and the organization’s commitment to sustainable energy. Following the UN’s ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,’ which set 17 interlinked global goals to address some of the world’s most pressing issues – chief among them climate change – Grasshopper has committed to helping the world fully implement these international climate commitments.

“In Canada and abroad, public support for clean energy is higher than it has ever been and continues to grow,” says Ulianovschi. As of April 2020, nearly 1,500 jurisdictions in 29 countries have issued declarations of climate emergency, many of which include plans and targets for more renewable energy-based systems.

Clean energy is also more cost-effective than it has ever been, as wind and solar energy prices are comparable with conventional sources of electricity generation, and wind energy is now Canada’s lowest-cost source of new generating capacity. Ulianovschi observes that the cost of generating power from solar power has fallen by 90 percent since 2010, and the prices of onshore wind and solar are now even with gas power and cheaper than coal and nuclear power.

“Canada is undergoing a fundamental transition in how it generates, manages, and uses energy,” Ulianovschi says, and the rest of the world is starting to follow suit thanks to the work of Grasshopper and other companies in the sustainable energy sector. “If the average person cannot afford clean energy, we will not be able to put [these programs] into action, no matter how good it is for the environment. Because of this reality, at Grasshopper, it is important to us to take the products in the marketplace… and using our technological, financing, and regulatory expertise, deliver an elegant and cost-effective solution to various consumers.”

Grasshopper has also been at the forefront of several initiatives in its local community. In 2019, the company invested over $100 million into the Ontario economy via its renewable
infrastructure projects, providing opportunities to more than 5,000 workers with a strong emphasis on employing female and minority workers.

The company has also flexed its philanthropic muscle with regular donations to organizations like The War Amps and local food banks. In 2020, Grasshopper contributed over $50,000 to the Mississauga Food Bank and donated more than 10,000 surgical masks and additional COVID-19 protective equipment to local Ontario hospitals.

Now, in the coming weeks, Grasshopper Energy will be dispersing an aggregate total of $368,000 in annual rent payments to 1,070 residential partners in Ontario who, under the MicroFIT program, partnered with the company in 2015 to outfit their homes with solar panels. Since 2015, the solar panels installed through these residential partnerships have generated 114,139,161 kWh of clean, carbon-free electricity. This is the equivalent of offsetting the CO₂ emissions generated from the electricity use of 13,663 homes in a year.

Ulianovschi considers the company’s biggest challenge to be that people from all walks of life do not understand the gravity of the climate change crisis, and unremitting debate on the matter leads to unproductive divisiveness. “Most of the other challenges we face as a company or as a sector tend to
precipitate from that root cause,” he explains.

A hostile stance in any given region to fighting climate change tends to choke potential capital for sustainable energy measures and drive it to more climate-friendly markets. This leads to price increases for clean solutions and low adoption rates in those markets, slowing or preventing volume pricing from ever being achieved. “All of us, including the clean energy sector, our partners in government, the media, and elsewhere must do more to educate people about climate change,” Ulianovschi emphasizes.

He knows that the message must be conveyed to reach even the harshest sceptics. This means that the shift to clean energy must not be put forth as an extreme, overnight proposition. Clean energy proponents must highlight how powerful clean energy can be in creating jobs and driving economic growth, to naturally sway lead manufacturers and providers away from fossil fuel dependence.

As 2021 begins, Grasshopper will deploy more clean energy assets around the world. Ulianovschi sees South America as a market for serious consideration where the company intends to “put shovels in the ground,” as he puts it. Grasshopper plans to continue raising capital for further development while increasing education about climate change. Additionally, the company will continue to advocate for clean energy on the global stage, working with international bodies like the UN to further educate about the climate crisis and “to accelerate the development of a sustainable world” – the company’s vision statement.

“In 2021, we are focused on business development, community
engagement…exploring different clean energy technologies, like batteries, storage, and [electric vehicle] charging,” Ulianovschi says of carbon reduction technologies.

The company has received multiple national industry awards for its ongoing efforts, including being recognized as the solar innovator of the year, project finance innovator of the year, and solar developer of the year by the Canadian Solar Industries Association (CSIA). But the Grasshopper Energy team is trying to achieve much more than acknowledgment; they understand that climate change is the defining issue of our time. Grasshopper’s goals for the industry are as vast as its global reach, and its entire team remains motivated to provide a more sustainable world and a greener future for all.

“Climate change impacts our communities, planet, children, and future generations. We are doing this for the well-being of our local and global community,” states Ulianovschi.

The post A World Leader in Sustainable Energy Solutions<p class="company">Grasshopper Energy Corporation</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

National Waste Partners continues to grow and evolve as Bestige Holdings LLC shepherds it to greater success. In 2017, J-Mec, the premier waste and recycling equipment provider in the Midwest, joined the family and its founder, Jim Mechler, stayed on and is currently Senior Vice President of Operations for all companies.

“J-Mec has always been about customer service, innovation, and growth. The vision of Bestige and National Waste Partners was the perfect fit for us,” he said. “Leveraging the resources of Bestige, we are able to expand our wealth of knowledge and experience to other parts of the country. Our national coverage is definitely what sets us apart.”

Most recently, the company acquired GK Industrial Refuse Systems (GKI) to expand its already strong portfolio. A market leader in the Pacific Northwest and a natural fit for National Waste Partners, Tacoma-based GKI specializes in waste equipment sales, rentals, and service.

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, National Waste Partners has branch locations in Chicago, Wisconsin, Alabama, and Washington, DC to provide instillation, refurbishment, and repair services. “We have coverage across the U.S.,” says Vice President of Sales, Gary Brooks. The company’s current subsidiaries – CRA, ACS, J-Mec, and GKI – boast extensive reach, but they can’t service all customers, so National Waste Partners has teamed up with other service providers to handle regions beyond the company’s geographical footprint. “We’ve got close to 200 service provider partners that we work with to cover the areas that aren’t densely populated for us,” Brooks says.

Wherever the location or whatever the situation, the team makes it a priority to give customers the individualized care they deserve. This means paying attention to what the customer is saying, rather than slapping a one-size-fits-all answer onto each problem. “One of the big things that sets us apart is we listen to what the customer needs,” Brooks says. “It’s more of a consultative approach. We don’t necessarily come in saying we have all the answers. Our first step is to listen and to see what the customer’s situation is so we can bring them a solution.”

The individualized service doesn’t stop there. “We also offer custom solutions,” says Brooks. “The applications are so unique.” The uninitiated may think all compactors are the same, but this simply is not true. Each customer has a specific need that needs a specific solution. “A compactor is not a compactor is not a compactor,” Brooks explains. “They start out the same, but how you apply them and install them is a completely different discussion. And with our in-house fabrication capability we can fabricate just about anything you can dream up to fit or work with your application.”

How does the customer know what they are getting? How can they judge the quality and reliability of a National Waste Partners’ product or service? The team recognized that customers deserve to be fully informed so they developed a system of measurement. “From my experience this is a very informal industry,” says CEO David Myles. “There’s a lot of discussion around certain things, but most of the industry relies on just talking about it and not really on a lot of numbers. So one of the first things we tried to do was say, ‘what is the uptime and what is the lifecycle of some of the equipment?’ Just to understand what the bar is.” The team has been working with manufacturers to get the answers and has “started measuring almost everything that we do,” Myles says. “And that’s been very insightful for us as an organization.”

The team measures everything, from how many times they make service visits and how often a specific model breaks down, to their service response time and whether or not the problem is resolved on the first service visit. “I think we are pioneering that effort,” Brooks says.

This is important information because reliability is crucial in the waste management industry. “When a compactor is down it’s usually down at the wrong time – like at a hotel, when they’re having a huge event,” Myles says. “Once it breaks down bad things happen as far as garbage everywhere and also odor and pest control issues.” Having clear data to back the company’s promises gives customers peace of mind. “That’s been an important distinction in growth for us as a company,” he says. “When we say something we want to be able to back it up with numbers.”

Another way the team builds trust is by readily admitting when they miss the mark during a service call. “It’s not always evident what’s broken, so people make mistakes,” Myles says. “Everybody makes mistakes.” The key is to address the error right away and focus on a speedy resolution. “You’ve got to make sure that you trust employees to admit they made a mistake. Mistakes don’t get cheaper over time; they get more expensive. So the earlier you admit a mistake the cheaper it is to resolve.” And the team is confident they can resolve whatever mistake has been made. “Everything in my mind is fixable,” says Myles.

The team is also transparent about their capabilities – they only promise what they know they can deliver. “We try not to overcommit,” Myles explains. “We aren’t all things to all people. We can’t do everything. We can’t get a compactor to Durango Colorado in twelve hours. We can’t go to remote areas and do certain things, but we can service almost anything within our service area. So the trust comes in knowing your capabilities, letting your employees tell you when something is wrong, and then, with the customers, admitting when you make a mistake.”

National Waste Partners owns its equipment, which helps the company deliver consistently reliable service. “Our approach on that is different than most in that, when we go to install a machine, we don’t send a guy and rent a forklift,” Brooks says. “There’s nothing wrong with that business model, but that’s just not us. We own our own equipment so we will show up with a semi, a forklift, the appropriate welders, supplies – everything to fabricate and install a unit. And it’s so much more efficient. We are in control. We don’t have to wait for things to be delivered; we can prefabricate things in the shop.”

This efficiency allows the team to complete more jobs in less time. “We can do in one day what it would take another company two or three days onsite, just because of the equipment and the tools we provide the team with.”

Getting the job done efficiently doesn’t just save time and money; it also cuts back on potential mishaps. “The longer that you are onsite, the more things can go wrong,” Myles says. Another way to avoid onsite complications is to do as much work in a controlled environment as possible – this also ensures a higher quality product overall. “We think we are unique in that we try to do as much offsite as we can. You are more accurate in the shop than you are out in the field.”

National Waste Partners has managed to weather the COVID-19 storm, but the team certainly felt the effects alongside the rest of the world. “It sort of threw you off the tempo,” Myles shares. “It threw our company off, it threw everybody off. It was a very sad, disturbing thing that’s happened.”

National Waste Partners took the threat seriously and immediately put safety measures in place when the pandemic hit. The team closed the offices right away. “We shut that down very quickly and had them working from home very quickly,” Myles says. The service team could not work from home of course, so the company launched new safety training for employees who work onsite. “We always stress safety, but it’s not just their own safety [now], it’s other people’s safety. We want to make sure they are distancing, washing their hands, having protective gloves and masks.” Any employee who had concerns working in the field despite these measures was encouraged to stay home and stay safe.

The waste industry was not as affected as many other industries, since people continued to produce waste throughout the quarantine. But, because National Waste Partners services commercial and industrial customers, the company did feel an impact. “All the hotels, and movie theaters, and restaurants – their waste has cut down quite a bit, especially at the start,” says Myles. “So our service went down dramatically.”

Some of this waste shifted to other areas that still needed servicing. With people staying at home and cooking at home, multifamily housing and grocery stores saw an uptick in waste. “It was an interesting experience – that sort of volume shift, which I don’t think anybody’s ever experienced,” Brooks says.

Another factor that impacted business is that customers decided to wait to make major purchases. “People’s decision model changed instantly,” Myles says. “People that were going to invest in new equipment decided to hold off until we see through this.” By mid-April the team noticed customers were starting “to make decisions again to move forward,” so the future looks optimistic.

Times remain uncertain as we adjust to the new normal, but “people still have to carry on,” Myles points out. “There’s still waste. It still makes sense to compact and bale.” And as long as there is waste to be compacted and baled, National Waste Partners is committed to providing the most efficient, reliable, and quality solutions through good times and bad.

The post A Partner You Can Count On<p class="company">National Waste Partners</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Named for Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind, Borea began in 2006 and has constructed nearly one-third of Canada’s renewable energy projects, leading the charge in this necessary transition.

Over 70 large-scale projects, comprising over 6800 MW of completely renewable energy, have been completed or are in process.

Borea’s staff boasts over 200 skilled and experienced professionals, with an estimated five hundred site employees across Canada. Thanks to its experience and ability in renewable energy, the company can focus its skills on bringing cost-effective, turnkey alternatives to move the nation’s entire energy grid forward.

Putting the ‘new’ in renewable
Despite the pandemic, Borea’s mission to “deliver renewable with care” is moving ahead without interruption. Borea is using new technologies to improve renewable energy as well.

A major recent example is the Suffield project in Alberta, completed in October 2020. The plant utilizes both bifacial panels and solar tracking technology, generating more power in a smaller space compare to a monofacial panel and fixed tilt racking system.

The union of these two technologies heralds a bold new development in solar energy and may prove instrumental in future plant design.

Suffield’s location in Canada’s Energy Project is no coincidence. Although Canada’s Western provinces are facing a moratorium on coal-fired power plants, they have a far greater resource available; thanks to the flat terrain, they boast the sunniest weather in Canada.

Alberta alone enjoys an average of 1,900 hours of sunshine in the north and 2,300 hours in the south, making it the nation’s sunniest province—and a natural hotbed of solar development.

The Suffield project, boasting 90,000 solar panels organized into ten blocks, will help Canada move down the road toward its renewable energy future and it demonstrates bold new technologies as well.

As their name implies, bifacial solar panels display photovoltaic cells on both sides, substantially increasing their output capacity. But more practically, the bifacial panels mitigate the blockage caused by accumulations of snow. This technology significantly improves the reliability of the solar farm during the frigid winter.

Making light of snow
With many types of solar panels, snow accumulation can at the very least necessitate tedious cleaning, and potentially take whole power plants out of commission. But with bifacial technology, power can still be generated on the panels’ reverse side from sunlight, even from the light reflected off fallen snow.

This advantage provides enough power and heat through the power generation process to melt the snow and hold power generation steady.

Project Engineer Moran Wang explains that as our planet faces the extreme weather that will result from climate change, it will be more essential than ever to maintain a resilient power grid during these events—and bifacial technology can help provide that.

But the bifacial panels are only one half of the Suffield project’s new advantages. Panel tracker technology, which adjusts the panels so that they remain permanently perpendicular to the sun on a single axial, helps the panels maintain constant optimal power production. The result is that their output is far superior to static panels, which in comparison enjoy full sunlight only for a limited time each day.

The second function of the solar tracker is to facilitate the snow removal process. Wang explains that, “If we detect snowfall, the panel will be triggered into a ‘snow-dumping’ mode. That makes it more reliable, in the sense of facing a more extreme environment.”

Tracking technology and bifacial panels could produce as much as 30 percent more energy than traditional panels. This helps achieve more power production in a similar footprint than monofacial with fixed tilt racking.

Or as Wang prefers it, “To achieve the same amount of energy, you have a smaller footprint.”

Bird’s eye view
As project engineer on the Suffield project, Wang also oversaw development of the plant’s weather station, Suffield’s eyes and ears, plus another innovation: an aerial drone outfitted with infrared cameras.

“It’s a huge asset,” says Wang, who pilots the drone himself. The bird’s eye view can highlight panel problems instantly, saving time and money during diagnostic procedures.

“We used to spend a huge amount of money to call in actual aircraft with human pilots and human camera operators to do this kind of service,” Wang recalls. “Now, we can use a tiny little drone operated by someone on-site.”

With the success of the Suffield project, Wang says he believes the next step in renewable energy is increasing energy storage capacity and reliability; keeping the power flowing so energy grids don’t need to fall back on fossil fuel backups.

“I think one missing piece of the puzzle is making it more reliable,” he says. “From there, we can only improve it.”

Advances in battery technology can ensure wind power and solar continue supplying grids even during night hours or inclement weather, bringing renewable energy more in line with Canada’s ever-increasing energy requirements.

But while the Suffield project highlights Borea’s embrace of new ideas, it is but one of the company’s recent projects.

In Saskatchewan, approximately 10 km south of Herbert and approximately 40 km east of Swift Current, the Blue Hill Wind Energy Project is a 175 MW facility comprising 35 wind turbines with a capacity of 5 MW each. This project called for careful planning, as environmental constraints and hot afternoon temperatures presented some unique challenges, which Borea rose to meet.

Carbon-neutral coming
As Borea continues to advance these renewable energy projects as well as the relevant technology involved, the company is still committed to building a carbon-neutral energy grid in Canada.

“I do think renewable energy is the way of the future,” Wang says. He adds that although wind and solar power are hardly cutting-edge ideas, it is only recently that they have become really practical.

He agrees that with the additions of bifacial panels and tracker technology production and implementation costs may increase, but he argues solar technology is still very much an industry in its infancy.

“With everything in human history, we have to let it grow,” he says. “I’m proud to be at the forefront of this.”

The post Innovation in Alberta: Bringing New Technologies to Solar Power<p class="company">Borea Construction</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

The global economy continues to face tough times. In Canada, the exact amount spent on COVID-19 relief efforts – including vaccines, health care for the ill, ventilators, emergency subsidies for businesses, sickness benefits for individuals, and personal protective equipment (PPE) – is unknown. By some estimates, though, the federal government is bleeding $1.5 billion every day, and this shows no signs of trending downwards as the Omicron variant spreads and case counts keep climbing.

But although the pandemic has revealed many of our society’s structural shortcomings, including the frailty of supply chains worldwide, it has also brought opportunities for growth closer to home, especially in Canada’s resource sector.

Supporting Indigenous-led forestry
With about 43 percent of Canada’s land area covered by forests, it’s not surprising that there existed a forest industry to support the building of the nation centuries before Confederation in 1867, providing the earliest settlers with an invaluable material for construction, fuel, furniture, and more.

Evolving over the years, forestry today supports over 300,000 jobs coast to coast, provides for hundreds of communities, and adds over $26 billion every year to Canada’s economy. But like other sectors, forestry faces its share of obstacles and has done so particularly during the pandemic.

To make up for retiring workers and a general shortage of staff, other resource industries have been taking up the challenge and diversifying to future-proof their workforces. One of the most notable, mining, is looking at ways of improving its male-centric reputation and being more inclusive by hiring women at all levels, from mine sites to boardrooms. And industries such as construction are making efforts to bring on more women to fill positions in carpentering, drywalling, plumbing, and many other under-employed trades.

Last May, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, Seamus O’Regan Jr., announced calls for the next round of proposals for the IFI. Recognizing the important role Indigenous communities play in the nation’s forestry sector, the proposals are aimed at supporting Indigenous participation in “forestry-related opportunities, businesses, careers and governance,” according to Natural Resources Canada.

The proposals add, “The forest sector brings value, both economically and spiritually, to Indigenous communities. This initiative builds a stronger Indigenous forest sector that thrives and sustains its economic resilience during and post-COVID 19.”

Representing a forward-thinking investment for Indigenous communities and the entire nation in a post-pandemic world, Natural Resources Canada has allocated $13 million to support Indigenous forestry projects across Canada. To date, the IFI has committed approximately $6.8 million to projects, with some $6.2 million available for the period 2021 to 2023.

In its 2019 Budget, the Government of Canada pledged funds for Indigenous forest programs to help address issues of representation in the sector, including increased gender diversity.

While the IFI brings many benefits, including greater Indigenous participation in forestry such as careers and governance, greater collaboration and investment with Indigenous persons and others involved in natural resources such as industry, stakeholders, and non-governmental organizations, only specific project types are funded.

However, these include training and forestry skills development, environmental stewardship, developing forestry-related technologies, tools and services, and others with a focus on forest resource management and clean technology.

Eligibility criteria
Although applications to the Indigenous Forestry Initiative can be made throughout the year, they are reviewed depending on availability of funds, and applicants must meet specific criteria to apply. The latest round of decisions has been delayed, but will be made available by February 22, 2022.

To be eligible, project types, recipients, and expenditures must meet certain benchmarks:

• Qualifying recipients include Indigenous communities or governments, such as Métis community organizations, self-governing First Nations, Indian Act bands, tribal councils or other similar entities such as general council, academic institutions and research associations operating with Indigenous partners, and for-profit and not-for-profit entities with 50 percent or higher Indigenous ownership.

• To receive project support, applicants must justify expenditure to support their projects (including costs) in 10 eligible categories.

• Eligible categories include training and skills development, professional and technical services, salaries and benefits, travel, costs of planning and design, and capital costs such as project-related infrastructure, machinery, equipment, and supplies, including fuel.

• Some costs – such as those related to developing the IFI Application and lobbying – are not eligible.

Like other government projects, the IFI is competition-based, and only completed applications meeting eligibility criteria including project type, eligible recipients such as national and regional Indigenous organizations, and eligible expenses to support the project will be given the green light for further assessment.

Subject matter experts such as those with an in-depth knowledge of forestry, bio-products manufacturing, finance, and business development, will sit on panels under the oversight of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) to evaluate the merit of projects.

“To the extent possible, such panels will be gender-balanced, majority Indigenous, and will include Indigenous youth developing skills in one or more of the expert subject areas,” according to the latest version of the Indigenous Forestry Initiative.

Driving inclusion
Along with the IFI, the recent renewal of other Strategic Partnership Initiatives (SPIs) – namely the Full Forest Value Initiatives and the True North Treasure Initiative – will see another $10 million aimed at creating other economic opportunities in Canada, especially in the mining sector.

“Renewing the True North Treasure and Forest Full Value initiatives will support continued Indigenous economic growth in Quebec, specifically in the mining and forestry sectors,” Indigenous Services minister Patty Hajdu said in a media release.

The $4.5 million True North Treasure Initiative – commencing its fourth phase with investments from 2022 to 2025 – will further support relationships between Indigenous communities and private/public sector partners.

The $4.5 million Forest Full Value Initiative, with investments also extending from 2022 to 2025, will assist Indigenous communities in Quebec to “leverage forest resources in a sustainable manner,” foster important partnerships, create jobs, “and improve their economic activities related to the food and energy sectors while honouring their cultures and traditions.”

For years, Canada’s forest sector has played a key role in the success of the nation’s economy, providing employment, social, and environmental benefits. Through the Indigenous Forestry Initiative, the country will continue advancing its position right here at home.

For more information on Canada’s Indigenous Forestry Initiative, visit: https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/science-and-data/funding-partnerships/funding-opportunities/forest-sector-funding-programs/indigenous-forestry-initiative/13125

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Located in Quispamsis, NB, not far from the port city of Saint John, The Smart Energy Company is a member of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, and the province’s leading solar developer, whose projects account for over 50 percent of all grid-tied solar installations in New Brunswick.

The company was founded in 2016 by CEO Mark McAloon, with a vision, the company says, to “accelerate the world’s transition to clean energy” and a mission to “create the most compelling renewable energy packages for commercial enterprises globally.”

To learn more about this impressive vision and mission, we spoke with McAloon who explained that the company had begun as a residential solar energy business, “but because I am an entrepreneur by definition, I am always looking to see what we can do to grow the company, where there’s a need, and what we can offer that has value.”

A need for new ideas
A major issue for homeowners attempting to achieve solar-energy efficiency and predictability, he learned, stems from placement of the panels on the roof. The energy generated for one home may be quite different from that generated on a neighbour’s roof, either because the panel had to be placed in a different position in relation to the sun or because of differences in the roof’s pitch.

But, he realized early on, “if you take solar panels off the roof and put them on the ground, you have much better control of the panel and can optimize the angle it is facing into the sun.”

And that’s not the only benefit, because if the solar array is installed on the ground there is the option of utilizing bi-facial solar panels which produce electricity from both front and back of the panel, angled to get maximum light hours. The end result is considerably higher efficiency and predictability than most roof-top systems achieve.

However, while ground solar arrays were impractical for small residential urban lots, they could be eminently suitable for spacy rural areas, and of particular value to farmers.

This is where McAloon turned the company’s attention in 2017, engaging in research and development and partnering with community leaders, all of whom were intrigued by the potential of solar as a viable option.

Designed to work here
For the company’s first large-scale solar utility project, no equipment was available in Atlantic Canada, so it was all purchased from outside the province.

“But after a year of operating we found that we had to replace many of the components and modify the system. We modified it so much that there was barely anything left of the original system. We were forced to innovate and become more of an engineering firm, taking a product and learning how to design it to work in our environment.”

The products had to be modified structurally to withstand the north-east gale-force winds and still be attractive. Howling winds weren’t the only problem, either, because the wet and sticky snow of Atlantic Canada’s long winters threatened electrical components.

The solution was the NOREASTER®, a ground-installed solar-energy system specifically designed to withstand all that wind, snow, and freezing rain. But that wasn’t all. The system was also designed to make it easier for farmers, who are used to setting up generators themselves, to assemble the system on site, since the NOREASTER® is really just an electrical generator powered by sunlight instead of diesel.

Farmers can order a package online, receive all the materials, components, and instructions, and assemble the entire system themselves up to the point of commissioning it and connecting it to the grid, which requires a certified installer.

Going global
An added plus of NOREASTER’s® portability is that it can be marketed and sold not only regionally but nationally and internationally, bringing McAloon’s mission to be a global supplier a step closer to reality. “It’s really a solar farm in a box,” he says.

Today a number of New Brunswick farms, including dairy and cattle farms and greenhouse operators whose owners were looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, are utilizing the NOREASTER’s® power and reliability.

One example is McCrea Farms, an eighth generation New Brunswick family farm. Since John McCrea arrived in Shannon, NB in 1821 the family has stayed to live and farm in the area. With a herd of beef and dairy cattle, forestry, maple syrup, a hatchery and farm tourism among the list of their offerings, this is an incredibly busy farm.

Seventh generation owners Bruce and Nancy Colpitts (nee McCrea) worked with The Smart Energy Company to implement a grid-tied solar system that would offset their energy costs and to align with their mission of being good stewards of the land that their family and community rely on. McCrea Farms are now the first customer to install The Smart Energy Company’s Solar Farm in a Box. After receiving the materials, an instructional video, and a manual, Bruce, Nancy and their sons built their very own 100kw solar farm on their property.

In the weeks following the McCrea’s project, two other New Brunswick businesses have followed suit in building their own NOREASTER® in a box. The company is readying itself to supply customers and electrical contractors in other parts of Canada and New England.

Urban, commercial, industrial
New Brunswick leaders took notice of The Smart Energy Company’s products and their success in farming operations which led to opportunities to install variations of solar arrays in public schools, and in a number of small to mid-size businesses.

While ground installations have definite advantages over roof-top installations, McAloon has by no means given up on urban needs and the company has designed installations that work well on flat roofs.

Another ‘first of its kind’ installation is currently generating energy for the Social Enterprise Hub, a facility in uptown Saint John where land space is at a premium. Instead, an innovative system is installed on the building’s flat roof. It effectively faces both east and west, picking up rays from the rising sun, and on the other side, from the setting sun.

“That was a really good project for us to gather data from and compare with other systems,” says McAloon of the project which received an Environmental Recognition Award from the City of Saint John in 2017.

The success of the installation in Saint John also shows that solar energy systems do not need a huge amount of sunlight to function, as the port city is wreathed in fog as often as not. All that’s needed is light.

The Smart Energy Company™ has also developed a rooftop and canopy solar energy system for the Saint John Regional Hospital.

Better and better
But its innovation doesn’t stop there. When Day & Ross, Canada’s second largest transportation company, with over 8,000 employees, drivers, and owner-operators in Canada and the U.S., considered how they could achieve their sustainability goals, they turned to The Smart Energy Company™.

The result is that their state-of-the-art terminal in Moncton is now powered by the largest net-metered solar installation in Atlantic Canada. The 100 KW NOREASTER® solar array will save Day & Ross thousands in utility bills and offset 34.5 tons of equivalent CO₂ emissions a year, which equates to 3.2 hectares of carbon-absorbing forest.

Kevin Chase, CFO at Day & Ross, says, “The Smart Energy Company™ completed the project on time and to our satisfaction. We have been impressed with how they have adapted to working during this pandemic and have provided great overall project management and guidance. They have helped improve our understanding of renewable systems as this solar installation in Moncton is a key step in our larger sustainability strategy.”

Just as the Day & Ross project was wrapping up, work was beginning on a 1.63 MW community solar farm in the Town of Shediac. In partnership with NB Power, The Smart Energy Company™ is building and installing over 4,000 solar panels and several hundred NOREASTER® arrays, connected to an energy storage system, making it the first utility-scale solar farm in Atlantic Canada.

It is scheduled for completion at the end of 2021 and is an important component of the Smart Grid Atlantic Energy Program being implemented by NB Power together with Siemens Canada, Nova Scotia Power, and the Town of Shediac.

“This clean energy project will offset the electricity used by a few of the industrial buildings in Shediac, and will be an important signature project for both our company and our province,” McAloon said.

The right direction
McAloon says that in 2017, when the team started researching and developing ground solar installations for farms, they didn’t intend this product to be competitive with large-scale projects such as Day & Ross or the partnership with NB Power to build in Shediac.

“But now it is, and companies all across Atlantic Canada are calling us and asking, ‘what is this solar farm in a box?’ It really simplifies things for them, as they don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time an organization asks them if they can put solar on their property. We can offer them a full turn-key package.”

McAloon grows reflective when he starts talking about climate change and how we can reduce our carbon footprint. “There is no absolute solution for everything, but there is a need for us, as a society, to take steps toward the right solution and that is where this small piece in the large puzzle comes in. Renewable sources of energy like the NOREASTER® won’t change everything, but it is moving us in the right direction,” he says.

“We can’t continue the way we were, so the shift starts when people and organizations start taking a leadership role. It’s people like the Pownings [sculptor Peter Powning and author Beth Powning, early adopters of the NOREASTER® on their property near Sussex]. It’s the farmers, like McCrea Farms, businesses like Radical Edge (outdoor outfitters in Fredericton) or ALIVE Kombucha in Moncton who put our logo on their beverage bottles. It’s large organizations like Day & Ross, or Saint John Energy or NB Power [which awarded its Energy Efficiency Excellence Award to The Smart Energy Company in 2018],” says McAloon.

“It is all our partners who are making a difference and for this, our little grassroots company is very grateful.”

In addition to solar energy systems, The Smart Energy Company is also a source for Generac PWR CELL Clean Energy Storage Systems and is an approved installer for Tesla Fast Charging Stations.

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