TORONTO HYDRO
POWER FOR A CHANGING CITY
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TORONTO HYDRO
“THERE’S AN ENHANCED SENSITIVITY TO POWER QUALITY, ESPECIALLY BY OUR INDUSTRIAL CUSTOMERS.
PRESERVATION AND
TRANSFORMATION Sustainable Business Magazine speaks to Toronto Hydro about adapting former industrial spaces to cater to the needs of a changing city.
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On May 2, 1911, three years after Toronto’s population of 376,000 voted in overwhelming numbers for the formation of a municipal electric company, the Toronto Hydro-Electric System was founded at the Old City Hall. In the 1910s, the new company supplied 7 GWh of electricity to just under 4,000 homes and businesses, with a peak demand of 4 MW. Over a century later, in 2017, the same company was supplying a city of 2.8 million people with 24,381 GWh of power, with a peak load of 4,316 MW. As Toronto has transformed, so too has Toronto Hydro. Today, according to the 13th annual Vital Signs Report, approximately 51% of Torontonians were born outside Canada, and the city is known around the world as a center for finance, technology, arts and culture, and business. As the economy of the city changed towards the end of the twentieth century and white-collar and service sector jobs in Toronto replaced the old manufacturing industries, factories closed, leaving large brownfield sites in the city. Meanwhile, in 2017, Toronto Hydro’s pioneering energy conservation and demand management programs resulted in estimated energy savings of 353,000 MWh, reducing Toronto’s greenhouse gas emissions by 14,120 tons of CO2. Toronto Hydro has been involved in envelope-pushing energy storage projects,
and is installing new charging stations for electric vehicles. But equally innovative is the way Toronto Hydro has reused buildings and spaces from Toronto’s industrial past. At both the Eglinton Light Rail Transit Battery Energy Storage System, currently under construction, and the new Clare R. Copeland Transformer Station (TS), Toronto Hydro has been involved in large-scale projects which have taken pieces of Toronto’s history, and preserved and adapted them for the needs of a thoroughly modern city.
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TORONTO HYDRO
PRESERVATION AND RENEWAL Last time Sustainable Business Magazine spoke to Toronto Hydro, in early 2016, the company was constructing Canada’s second ever underground transformer station. (See Sustainable Business Magazine issue 03/16 for the full story.) Today, Copeland TS is in the
energization phase, with structural, architectural, mechanical, and electrical work for phase 1 of the installation largely complete. “Upon final energization in 2019, Copeland TS will be capable of providing up to 144 MVA of additional capacity to the south core of Toronto,” explains Dino Priore, Executive
Vice-President and Chief Engineering and Construction Officer at Toronto Hydro. “This will help address the construction boom in the downtown core by supplying electricity to new condominium buildings and office towers in the area. Copeland TS will also allow the transfer of load from the aging Windsor
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TORONTO HYDRO
TS, enabling several years of upgrades to the aging equipment there, and helping improve the overall reliability of supply to the financial and entertainment district.” The new transformer station is directly adjacent to – and, indeed, partly underneath – the historic John Street Roundhouse, which was once the largest combined passenger car and locomotive facility in Canada. After it closed in 1986, the Roundhouse was named a National Historic Site. Toronto Hydro and the construction team worked to preserve and enhance the site. “Copeland TS was built partially below the Roundhouse’s Machine Shop,” says Mr. Priore. “To preserve the historical value of the building, Toronto Hydro disassembled the building brick-by-brick, catalogued all materials, and stored everything offsite. When the underground station was completed, the Machine Shop was rebuilt and restored to its original appearance.” The new development has also improved public access and beautified the
environment – all while preserving and promoting a key piece of Toronto’s history. “Other work at the site includes the restoration of an access roadway, the addition of a public park, a green wall, roof installations, and the introduction of COR-TEN steel panels along the Lakeshore Boulevard and Rees Street faces of the station,” says Mr. Priore.
“The COR-TEN steel is perforated to enable airflow from the transformer cooling systems, using perforations that are patterned to reflect the layout of the railway lands from the 1930s. The overall effect is that of a very large mural, enhancing the beauty of the south core while paying homage to the industrial heritage of the area.”
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TORONTO HYDRO
BATTERY STORAGE AT EGLINTON The new Line 5 Eglinton, better known as the Eglinton Crosstown Line, will be the fifth route in Toronto’s subway system, running from the new Mount Dennis station (currently under construction) at the intersection of Eglinton Avenue and Weston Road along 25 stops to terminate at Kennedy station. Owned by Metrolinx, the new line is scheduled to open in September 2021, and is expected to greatly improve convenience for Toronto’s 1.69 million weekly public transport users (ttc.ca, 2017), easing congestion, improving travel times, and allowing more passengers to travel at once.
In support of the Crosstown, a new maintenance and storage facility is being constructed near Mount Dennis station at the former Kodak Heights industrial park, which from 1912 to 2006 was a camera manufacturing factory for the Eastman Kodak Company. The facility will initially service 76 Bombardier vehicles, with a capacity of 135 to accommodate any expansions of the Crosstown. The site will also feature two artificial ponds and new plantings, including a green roof on the facility. In addition to this, the historic four-storey Kodak Building 9, formerly the recreation center for Kodak employees at the campus, was moved 60
meters by 24 dollies to allow station construction. It will be moved back to form part of the station’s entrance. In response to residents’ concerns about air quality in the Mount Dennis community, Metrolinx altered its plans for a gas-fired generating station on the site to provide backup power for the Light Rail Transit (LRT) line. Instead, it worked together with Toronto Hydro to build an innovative battery energy storage system, helping to improve reliability, reduce operating costs, and reduce carbon emissions. The new Eglinton LRT Battery Energy Storage System will be owned by Toronto Hydro and located on Metrolinx lands at Mount Dennis. “This replacement represents a clean, battery energy storage solution,” explains Mr. Priore. “The 10MW system is one of the largest in Canada, and includes a 90 kW solar photovoltaic system. The Metrolinx maintenance and storage facility and our adjacent energy storage facility will help beautify the former Kodak lands, a location with a long industrial history. The new system is expected to be fully installed by the end of 2019.” A HISTORY OF INNOVATION Toronto Hydro has been involved in the cutting-edge of battery storage technology for many years now. Alongside other utilities, Toronto Hydro provides funding to the Centre for Urban Energy at Ryerson University, where new energy storage projects are
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TORONTO HYDRO
regularly studied. At 440 Commissioners Street, a 4 MW Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) pilot project, installed in 2018, connects to the Toronto Hydro control room, and is being used for peak shaving, reactive power support, and voltage control. At Toronto Hydro’s work center
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at 500 Commissioners Street, a 500 kW community energy storage project supports electric vehicle charging in addition to providing backup power and load shifting. The list goes on. A 660 kW underwater compressed air energy storage system in Lake Ontario called Hydrostor has attracted international interest. And a pilot project with a 15 kW pole-top energy storage system, installed in 2016, has effectively reduced the strain on the local transformer by storing energy during off-peak hours and releasing it when needed. This unit has no physical footprint, as it’s mounted on a previously-installed electricity pole. “Battery storage innovation is a promising technology and Toronto Hydro is currently involved
in several other energy storage projects at various stages of development across the city, though these projects are smaller in scale than the Eglinton LRT energy storage system,” says Mr. Priore. NEW FRONTIERS By the end of 2019, Toronto Hydro’s latest energy storage system is expected to be complete. The Bulwer Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project is a 2 MW project, situated at a retired 4.16kV Toronto Hydro electrical substation in downtown Toronto, Bulwer Municipal Station (MS).
“Downtown Toronto is becoming densely populated, and we anticipate the demand for electricity will lead to a strain within local pockets of our infrastructure,” says Mr. Priore. “This project is a collaboration with Renewable Energy Systems (RES), with partial funding from Ontario’s Smart Grid Fund. The BESS project can provide a reduction of peak demand in the area, provide support for demand response initiatives and allow us to defer investing in expensive new assets.” “If you consider a typical urban environment, we’re supplying residential customers and commercial and industrial customers,”
says Mr. Priore. “With modern microelectronic equipment there’s an enhanced sensitivity to power quality, especially by our industrial customers. Any time there’s a split-second blip, they have to reset their manufacturing processes, which can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Battery storage technology can help the customers address this by conditioning the power, in addition to peak shaving. I’m very proud to work for a company like Toronto Hydro, where we have top-notch people and very challenging work, with such a diversity of interesting projects.” c
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Toronto Hydro 14 Carlton Street, Toronto, Ontario Canada, M5B 1K5 T: +001 416 542 8000 www.torontohydro.com
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