Children's centre gets green upgrade
Solar panels generating power 24 hours per day, powering the centre and ready to feed into the Inuvik electric system
Stewart Burnett
Northern News Services
Monday, August 14, 2017
INUVIK
The brown and orange Children First Centre has now added green to its colour palette, or blue depending on your interpretation, with a wall full of solar panels.
Marlo Jenks, Hudson Woodcock, Blair Fleming, Leah Owen, Ellie Wheelans and Caitlyn Wright show off the new solar panels on the Children First Centre. In the back is Patricia Davison, executive director of the centre. - Stewart Burnett/NNSL photo |
"We were really fortunate," said Patricia Davison, executive director of the centre.
Funding from CanNor, the Arctic Energy Alliance and a company called Bullfrog Power teamed up to provide roughly $270,000 over two years to install the solar panels plus a biomass furnace system. CanNor provided $210,000 of that.
The solar panels have been generating power 24 hours per day, which the installers weren't certain would happen even with the midnight sun.
"It's staying steady in between 6 to 7 kilowatts regularly that it's producing," said Davison, before a slew of rainy days hit a few weeks ago. "We're quite excited about that."
Next, the panels are set to be connected to the grid to feed any surplus power into the Inuvik electric system.
"Any kilowattage that we produce above what we're using will go back into the grid and other people will be using it instead, so nothing will be wasted," said Davison.
The photovoltaic system is a 16 kW PV system on the southwest and southeast facing walls of the centre.
The biomass system, which boils pellets to produce heat, is an 80 kW system.
The goal of the projects is to shift up to 50 per cent of the centre's annual electricity consumption away from thermal-generated electricity and shift up to 30 per cent of its heating consumption away from synthetic natural gas.
Davison said work has begun on the biomass system and the main bulk of construction should begin next month. The system will have an out building put up to hold the pellet material that feeds the boiler.
"We want to be a good environmental citizen and as a non-profit, it just makes sense to utilize these alternative energies that can be cost-saving and more efficient and great for the environment," said Davison.
The centre is looking at other green initiatives as well, such as replacing its fluorescent lighting with LEDs.
