Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 08/02) - If plans work out, Yellowknife may soon be home to two solar walls.

City officials are looking at installing such a feature at the Ruth Inch Memorial Pool. Another wall is already in place at Weledeh Catholic School.

The solar wall is a decade-old technology that is gaining favour across the country -- and the world. Both the biggest and the tallest solar walls are on Canadian soil.

The idea behind the technology is to save on energy costs by reducing the amount of work that needs to be done by heating boilers.

Intake air is passed through metal cladding which is heated by the sun.

Heat on the metal is transferred to the air, which can rise as much as 20 degrees in temperature before being sucked into the building. Building boilers then have to work less to heat the air.

"It's the same as your car sitting in a parking lot in the summer time," said Arctic Energy Alliance special projects officer Brian McCluskey.

At Weledeh, the $70,000 wall was expected to save 8,700 litres of heating oil annually when it was installed in 2000. The idea is to do something similar at the pool.

"As to how it works or how much energy it's going to save, I'm not 100 per cent sure," said city program manager Brian Kelln. "We're in the process of doing an analysis, getting all the information together."

The cost of a wall would have to come on top of $50,000 set aside in this year's budget to revamp the pool's ventilation and electronic control systems.

At least one city councillor is actively pushing the idea. Robert Hawkins likes the idea of a wall at the pool, and would like to see another one installed at city hall. "Even if (a panel) saves five to 10 per cent, in five to 10 years it's paid for itself," he said.