Our in-house energy manager pays dividends to our clients in many ways. In this case, our work meant Brookfield’s clients were first in-line for a Toronto Hydro program called PUMPsaver (link).
This program aims at improving the efficiency of the large building system pumps. Some of these pumps operate at full speed, only to have a throttling valve reduce the flow. This is like driving a car with the gas pedal pressed all the way to the floor and using only your brakes to control your speed – this is terribly inefficient. Continuing the analogy, PUMPsaver allows us to control the speed of the car using only the gas-pedal without the need to race the engine unnecessarily – this is much more efficient.
So far, we are seeing the average building save about $8,000 per year in electricity. That’s a great number when you consider that it costs our corporations absolutely nothing – Toronto Hydro (through their own contractor) is paying for the retrofit 100%.
Not every building will qualify for PUMPsaver – it depends on what kind of equipment is there. We are working through each of our sites to perform a pre-qualification.
Although this program was initially available only to buildings in the Toronto Hydro service area, it will soon be available to those in Oakville Hydro’s service territory. Should the program be made available elsewhere, you can be assured that we will work hard to bring this to our boards located in those other service areas.
