The City of Revelstoke hosted a Bio-Heat Summit Oct. 19, bringing together a small but interested group, to discuss municipal bioheating systems, which are fueled using organic waste. The event included a tour of Revelstoke’s bio-heating facility as well as presentations from industry experts and local government representatives.
The evening’s presentations were led by Rob van Adrichem, director of external relations with Community Energy Association Prince George, who noted Revelstoke’s place as a pioneer of biomass district heating systems.
“[Revelstoke] was one of the first communities in Canada to have a system like this, heating community buildings with heat from a sawmill and from sawmill residuals instead of propane,” van Adrichem said.
Larry Marchand, general manager of the Revelstoke Community Energy Corporation, began his presentation by talking about the pre-history of the corporation, giving credit to “innovative leaders who would revision Revelstoke, understanding and accepting that the changes in the forestry industry through the 1980s would be permanent, that Revelstoke would need to develop new directions and be strategically purposeful to hold on to what would remain of the forest sector.”
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That innovation led to the city becoming the sole shareholder of the Revelstoke Community Forest Corporation in the early 90s. The success of that venture led to the creation of the Revelstoke Community Energy Corporation in 1997. The system has been operating on bio-energy, using waste from Downie Sawmill, since 2005. It provides heat for eight buildings, including the Revelstoke Community Centre where the summit took place.
Revelstoke’s place as a pioneer in municipal bio-heating systems hasn’t been without issue. In April 2021, the Mountaineer reported on two fires at the facility that, at the time, were anticipated to take the system offline for several months. The aging infrastructure is also less efficient than newer systems, like the Fink Machine system being utilized in Sicamous.
“There are challenges running the facility no doubt,” said City of Revelstoke CAO, Evan Parliament. “There are operational costs. There are interruptions.”
Education and solutions were the primary goal of the summit, Parliament explained.
While Revelstoke has one of the oldest bio-energy heating systems in Canada, Sicamous 70 kilometres away has one of the newest.
Parliament, who became CAO in Revelstoke in 2022, was previously town manager for the District of Sicamous. When he started as manager in 2015, Parliament said he quickly became aware that both Sicamous and Revelstoke operated primarily on oil and propane heating systems, and that there was no natural gas due to the pipe ending just outside of Enderby. The cost is in the millions to extend the natural gas pipe system to Sicamous and Revelstoke.
“So Sicamous decided to be creative,” Parliament said.
Natural Resources Canada was looking to fund bio-heat facilities in communities without natural gas, leading to project funding from them, GreenBC and the Fraser Basin Council with the District of Sicamous picking up the balance. The total for the project was $1.6 million.
Once funding was secured, Parliament said conversations started about how to bring a boiler to Sicamous.
While Revelstoke’s bio-heating system is used by civic facilities, Sicamous’s system is primarily used by the private sector.
David Dubois, manager of business development at Fink Machines, provided some specifics on the Sicamous Energy System, which is a 530 kilowatt woodchip boiler.
“It’s designed to burn wood chips up to 50 per cent moisture, so we’re looking at woodchips coming either from sawmill residuals or from harvesting operations including wildfire mitigation,” Dubois said. “There’s an existing propane backup boiler to ensure all clients connected to it will maintain heat.”
There were several other presentations, including from Peak Renewables, which highlighted bio-energy heating systems in South Korea and Germany. Watch the full video of the presentations, as well as a question and answer session, on the city’s YouTube channel.
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