INNOVATION July-August 2012

BEING POWER SMART MAKES BUSINESS SENSE If you haven’t visited the City of Vancouver’s Creekside Community Recreation Centre yet, you should. It has a fitness centre, gym, dance studio, on-site childcare, soon-to-be-opened restaurant and fabulous views of False Creek and the North Shore mountains. It also achieved the highest LEED ® Platinum certification for green design, in large part because of its terrific energy efficiency. “Virtually no energy gets wasted there,” says Vladimir Mikler of Cobalt Engineering, “and it has a lot of unique features – for instance, Creekside is the first building in North America to use a solar absorption chiller in combination with radiant cooling, which is incredibly energy efficient.” But Creekside could have easily missed out on such a unique and effective feature if Cobalt had not worked with BC Hydro’s New Construction Program to complete an energy modeling study during the earliest design phase. “Energy modeling,” says Mikler, “allows for rigorous analysis of options to reduce energy use and, with BC Hydro’s support, it’s affordable. We believe all new large construction projects should take the advantage of this program: the buildings will perform significantly better and the owners will benefit from an immediate reduction in operating costs.” PlANNING A NEW BUIldING? Why yOU ShOUld BEGIN WITh ENERGy MOdElING

Looking for new ways to build better? Visit bchydro.com/construction or call 1 866 522 4713 .

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