With a major focus on promoting sustainable development and green technologies, Exhibition Place has undertaken a range of energy efficiency and carbon reduction projects.
Publicly owned urban park providing commercial, sports, education, entertainment and recreational enterprises and activities.
Toronto’s Exhibition Place draws more than 5.3 million visitors annually and is Canada’s largest urban park with 192 acres and 25 buildings and structures. Exhibition Place is owned by the City of Toronto and managed by the Exhibition Place Board of Governors.
It hosts more than 300 events and trade and consumer shows a year, including home games for the Toronto Marlies and Toronto FC, as well as the CHIN Picnic, the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair and Canada’s largest annual fair, the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), which draws about 1.3 million visitors.
With a major focus on promoting sustainable development and green technologies, Exhibition Place has undertaken a range of energy efficiency and carbon reduction projects. These include a geothermal cooling and heating system, a 1.6 megawatt trigeneration turbine (cooling, heating and power generation) and lighting replacement throughout the site. There is also continual upgrading and monitoring of energy efficiency operating procedures.
“Exhibition Place aims to be self-sustaining financially. However as a public facility with all assets owned by the City of Toronto, it will consider energy conservation projects with longer payback periods than usually occur in for-profit businesses,” says Dianne Young, Chief Executive Officer for Exhibition Place. “The role of Exhibition Place is not only to reduce electrical consumption but to be an environmental model for Toronto and the millions of visitors to the site each year.”
The energy efficiency measures introduced so far by Exhibition Place have resulted in a 42 per cent reduction in electricity consumption (25 gigawatts to 18 gigawatts) since 2005.
Exhibition Place has set a goal of reducing its electrical consumption by another six gigawatts by the end of 2009. “This is a very aggressive target,” says Mark Goss, General Manager of Operations.
Exhibition Place’s electricity demand is already lower than most other types of businesses because of its not-for-profit status and its environmental mandate. It also requires the bulk of its electricity only when events are on. As a result, its participation in the Ontario Power Authority’s (OPA’s) Demand Response 3 program is different than most other operations.
Most businesses participating in DR3 operate on a consistent schedule and can cut their electrical demand based on the program’s requirements: a minimum of 2.5 hours notice to shut down a portion of electricity usage for four hours between noon and 9 p.m., Monday to Friday.
“Exhibition Place doesn’t have this flexibility,” Mr. Goss says. “Our load curve is up and down depending on the day of the week and our event schedule. How do you turn off the lights under DR3 when you have a major show and 1.5 million people at the Direct Energy Centre?”
Instead, Exhibition Place worked with Direct Energy Business and CPower – Exhibition Place’s chosen DR3 providers (Aggregators) – to utilize Exhibition Place’s existing technology and assets to generate additional revenues that were available under DR3. Under DR3, participants receive revenue for their stand-by capacity and then receive additional revenue when they operate their generators.
“We have a clean generator (the 1.6 megawatt trigeneration unit) that can generate power on site, makes use of the waste heat and further reduces the environmental impact,” Mr. Goss says. Unlike a conventional generator, trigeneration converts most of the fuel into usable energy, creating financial and environmental benefits.
Following an evaluation of the trigeneration plant’s potential use both within and outside of the DR3 initiative, Exhibition Place determined that the DR3 initiative was a benefit to Exhibition Place.
“DR3 financially benefits Exhibition Place while at the same time providing additional generating capacity to the province’s electrical grid when demand is highest”, Mr. Goss says.
Since contracting under the OPA in April 2009, Exhibition Place has run its trigeneration unit three times under DR3 conditions and has a 100% performance rating in the program.
“When Exhibition Place starts generating under DR3, the load on the Ontario electrical system drops by 1.6 megawatts,” Mr. Goss says. “This is the equivalent of Exhibition Place shutting off the same amount of electricity we would have consumed during a major event like the CNE.”
The DR3 initiative benefits the Ontario ratepayers and the province’s electricity system because it provides the ability to manage system’s peaks during periods of relatively high demand.
DR3 benefits Exhibition Place directly because it maximizes the return on our trigeneration system investment so we can continue to move forward with other energy projects and our ultimate goal -- reducing our electrical demand and carbon footprint, “says Dianne Young.
“The DR3 program provides our customers with a clear path to a complete energy management strategy. Revenue earned from reduced energy use and enrollment in the DR3 program can be reinvested into energy conservation and demand management initiatives, such as updating infrastructure to more energy efficient standards or installing building automation systems. We applaud the energy efficiency measures Exhibition Place has taken in addition to DR3 enrollment,” says Mark Kleinginna, Director Solutions, Direct Energy Business.
Planned projects to further reduce electrical demand include installing a dry sprinkler system to allow buildings not used in the winter to fall below the freezing point, installing a back pressure steam turbine to produce electricity, and replacing inefficient light fixtures across the site including upgrading to LED where feasible. Other projects include replacing air conditioning with fans at delivery bay doors, as well as implementing non-capital projects that cut energy costs. By applying DR3 revenues to these additional energy efficiency efforts the value of Demand Response is increased exponentially.
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