Fortis recognizes 18 Massive Power Savers

Posted on January 18, 2011 11:46:00am by Okanagan Business Examiner

Eighteen organizations or people were honoured at Fortis’ annual PowerSense awards for their efforts to reduce power use. Carol Suhan, PowerSense manager, pointed out the real energy savings realized by their efforts.

Eighteen organizations or people were honoured at Fortis’ annual PowerSense awards for their efforts to reduce power use. Carol Suhan, PowerSense manager, pointed out the real energy savings realized by their efforts.

Already these projects have reduced power use by 275 gigawatts, which is enough, she says, to power 355 homes annually. Not all the projects are fully realized at present so the annual power savings will increase as time goes on.

Saving energy is much more important than just writing some numbers down and handing out awards. Most people probably don’t realize that at peak usage, Suhan says, “We have to buy electricity on the open market.” Ultimately such costs are passed on to the consumers, whether they are private individuals or businesses.

The awards given out came under two broad categories: six of the winners were “conservation leadership awards.” These six have all instigated programs with Fortis, but the energy savings are, to this point, only projected. They include Andrew Gaucher’s development projects, the City of Penticton, the Geotility Geothermal Installation Corp., Home for Learning construction project, Paul Schuster of New Town Architecture Urban Planning and the Penticton Indian Band for innovations in its new school and housing projects. 

The other dozen winners have had the projects in place long enough that actual power reductions have been measured.

Among those 12 savings ranged from 100,000 kilowatt-hours per year for the Canadian Mental Health Association in the region to a maximum of 1,238,754 kilowatts for the INvue condominium development in Kelowna. 

In between those two are The Society of HOPE (119,121 kWh/yr), Accent Inns of Kelowna (128,898 kWh/yr), Vincor (130,000 kWh/yr), Acorn Communities for the West Avenue Lofts development (173,185 kWh/yr), Weyerhauser Princeton Operations (249,428 kWh/yr), Okanagan College for its new Centre for Learning building (260,000 kWh/yr), Mission Group for the Amberhill Properties (386,303 kWh/yr), Interior Health for the Summerland Health Centre (400,000 kWh/yr), the Real Canadian Wholesale Club store in Penticton (494,061 kWh/yr), and the City of Penticton for water infrastructure upgrades (992,184 kWh/yr).

Several of these companies will be profiled in upcoming issues, showing how they made these savings.

Photos by Shawn Talbot

Caption:

Fortis’ 2010 PowerSense winners gather with their awards, representing total projected energy savings of 467 gigawatts.