YEG HARNESSES THE SUN
T
By Brad Watson, Program Manager, Facility Infrastructure Delivery, Integrated Infrastructure Services | Infrastructure Delivery Branch, City of Edmonton
he Edmonton Convention Centre is an iconic building in Edmonton’s River Valley skyline. Its key visual feature is a south-facing glass atrium, an ideal palette for Canada’s largest building-integrated solar photovoltaic (PV) glazing system. The rehabilitation project began as a like-for-like replacement of the existing original insulated glazing units (IGU) with design options that incorporated solar electricity generation. Since the City of Edmonton and Explore Edmonton have an aligned commitment to sustainability and a goal of working toward becoming an energy sustainable and climate resilient partner and city, this project provided a great opportunity 16 AN ABECN/ABECS PUBLICATION
to contribute towards that goal. With an average of 2,300 hours of bright sunshine each year, and as one of the sunniest cities in Canada, solar is the most viable form of renewable energy for widespread application in Edmonton. Combined with cooler temperatures, this creates ideal conditions for high levels of electricity generation. Our system is expected to generate about 200,000 kWh/year, making it the sixth largest solar PV system in Edmonton. As a comparison, the average household consumes about 7,200 kWh/year and the Convention Centre consumes some 7,000,000 kWh/year. As the Convention Centre consumes a significant amount of energy, this generation plant will only contribute to about three per cent of the
building’s electrical energy consumption and offers us an expected payback of about 22 years. The lifespan of the PVIGUs, as with most traditional glazing units, is 25 years. It is worthy to note that the glazing units that were replaced were original to the 1983 building, making them 37 years old at time of replacement, so although efficacy drops over time, we may be able to keep them on longer than 25 years. The system has only been in operation since July 2021, so our performance data is limited to the whole of August. Edmonton has also been constrained by excess smoke this year, which is not typically part of design calculations. For August, we can report 17,951 kWh of an August design average of about
