Project Showcase

Siksika Housing is working with two local housing companies to build two pilot energy efficient pilot projects. Form Polarblock has constructed an insulated foundation system with an R value of 31, while EcoPlast has designed, manufactured, assembled and finished the above-grade portion of the home using a patented panelized insulated wall system which uses recycled plastics that creates a home with no thermal bridging and R value of 30. The panelized construction system reduces the construction period, saving Siksika Nation time and money for new home construction, which is much needed due to Siksika Nation’s growing housing gap.

This housing project would be the first Cleantech installation of its kind for Siksika Housing and presents an opportunity to analyse and learn from the results for future decision making. In addition, project learnings will be shared with housing representatives with the Blackfoot Confederacy.

This project achieved SSRIA’s priority outcomes by developing educational materials on residential deep energy retrofits (DER), mainly by creating an introductory DER Guidebook currently hosted on the SSRIA website, by producing introductory DER course material delivered via five (5) modules, and lastly by constructing physical DER wall example mock-ups for inclusion in SAITGBT’s existing wall library.

SAIT-GBT hosted multiple DER Discovery Sessions on the SAIT campus, followed by multiple pilot deliveries of the DER course material (both in-person and via webinar), all of which were attended by interested construction industry professionals, SAIT faculty/instructors, SAIT students, and building owners/homeowners.

Video document trades orientation and various construction processes of a Passive House multi-family building in Edmonton for learning purposes.  This project did not develop a course in itself but materials that will support existing curriculum at Alberta educational institutions.

The project is needed to create a video repository of cold climate high-performance building and construction videos to augment existing educational courses created by post-secondary institutions across Alberta.

Window blinds are widely used in commercial and residential buildings to block solar radiation and reduce the effect of solar gain on indoor overheating. AI shading is applying its unique dynamic control strategy to automate window shade operation in a student room at NAIT.

The control strategy uses real-time environmental data inputs – such as weather, solar radiation, and temperature – and adjusts the corresponding actions of window blinds to regulate the indoor thermal conditions of the space. In summer, when there is sunlight entering windows, the blinds on those windows will move downwards to block the sunlight and reduce the solar heat gain. However, when a window orientation is not directly in the sun, the blinds will stay open to gain the natural light from outside. In winter, the operation is reversed to utilize solar heat for passive heating of the indoor space. At night, all the blinds will close to keep the user’s privacy.

AeroBarrier is an innovative product that will lower the air leakage of an existing building by an average of 40-70% with no demolition required. For this project, AeroBarrier was applied to a small commercial building from the 1950’s to address air leakage expected in an old building but also exacerbated by the multiple adaptations as various tenants have moved in and out. As many commercial spaces, closing for weeks on end for renovations is not feasible. AeroBarrier is a solution that can be quickly completed to get businesses up and running again.

The project looked to reach carbon neutrality by providing needed energy efficiency upgrades as well as installing renewable energy onsite. When complete the residence can entirely disconnect from the gas utility. The aim is twofold, to do this without disruption to the building structure and to make the transition financially viable through avenues accessible to the average homebuyer/owner.

This approach looks to address the issue of the large carbon footprint left by demolition and rebuilding residences to reach net-zero. It is also a proposed solution for homes that are on 0-lot lines built from 1995 to today which do not have the option of insulating the exterior of their homes.

The new Passive House Pavilion is the flagship public amenity at the Banff Recreation Grounds. It has an innovative building envelope and high-efficiency mechanical system that dramatically reduces energy needs, and sequesters carbon through extensive use of natural, sustainable, and local materials, prefabricated mass timber and sustainable wood fibre insulation.  Key design challenges included 1) achieving a 100-year service life, 2) adhering to the strict architectural requirements of the Banff Design Guidelines, and 3) Compliance with the Town’s Municipal Sustainable Building Policy and the Passive House Low Energy Building standard.

ENMAX Power, a subsidiary of ENMAX, is a regulated Alberta-based wires business, and as the Distribution Facilities Operator (DFO), they own, operate, and maintain the electrical distribution system in and around Calgary. This project will be a unique application of aggregated behind the meter energy storage as a non-wires solution (NWS) to alleviate grid capacity constraints and reduce emissions from residential customer homes. The success of this project as the first of its kind in Alberta will help lay the groundwork for DFOs across the province to install behind-the-meter storage in partnership with homeowners and contribute to ENMAX’s goals of providing a sustainable, flexible, two-way power grid.

This project had ENMAX collaborating with residential customers to install batteries in homes where distribution equipment is constrained due to load growth from EV and rooftop solar adoption. The project tested a software platform that allows ENMAX to control the charge and discharge cycles of the batteries to optimize distributed generation from rooftop solar and minimize reliance on Alberta’s carbon-Intensive grid.

This project piloted a smart EV Charging Solution at the University of Alberta car parks. As EV’s become more prominent, commercial buildings will have the greatest potential to minimize charger deployment costs and reduce energy consumption emissions generated by EV charging.

Commercial buildings play an important role in decarbonizing the transportation sector, which is the largest GHG emission contributor in Canada. EV’s, when coupled to a building’s electrical systems as a new power load, pass on energy consumption and GHG emissions from transportation to buildings, thus exacerbating building contribution to emissions.

The innovation is in the use of a combined dynamic demand management and emission signal-based control. It is different from the equal power sharing approach coupled with high current 48A electric vehicle charging stations.

This project deployed a three phased approach that uses technology to improve efficiency, sustainability, and operational excellence in agri-food buildings.

A traditional facility energy audit was followed up with the installation of IoT devices for ongoing real-time energy auditing. By utilizing machine learning and data science principles, predictive recommendations are made to improve operational efficiency based on weather, time of day, seasonality, and additional parameters specified by site operators. The data collected will further be utilized to identify facility upgrade recommendations that are based on environmental and economic factors.

The project is located in Lavern, Alberta, and is a newly constructed 6,141m² Kindergaten-through-Grade 5 school. SSRIA provided support for wind use, which is part of the school’s energy portfolio. the design of the new facility embodied the community’s cultural values and presents an exciting opportunity to create through the lens of the Niitsitapi and the Blackfoot world view.

The Aahsaopi School have ambitions to become a school with zero operation carbon emissions, so it has begun the design process with sustainable practices in mind. Its strategy includes green technologies designed to achieve full electrification through the portion of the project will contribute to the school’s operational carbon reduction, resilience, and energy independence. This GBTN project includes the installation of two-on-site wind turbines, each providing an anticipated 20Kw-30Kw rated power.

The project is a new mixed-use commercial building that houses a restaurant on the main floor and residential units on the upper floors. The building adopted a micro-combined heat and power (mCHP) technology and high-performance building envelop that aims to use 100% clean electricity generated on-site thereby reducing more than 40% of GHG emissions from the building operation.

The project is the first mCHP application in a mixed-use commercial building in Alberta. The success of the project showcases the economic and sustainability value of mCHP technology, and the tool and process developed at the project facilitates future mCHP applications in small commercial buildings.