Markham launched district energy (DE) in 1999 to address three priorities (a) increase energy resiliency following an major ice storm event (b) to attract a large data center investment by IBM and (c) provide the platform for a lower carbon future. In 25 years MDE has now constructed two DE systems, with four energy plants, and services over 15.4 million sq. ft. of residential, commercial and institutional customers with our reliability reported at over 99.9992%. Connection to DE is not mandatory in Markham. However, based on our reliability record, a competitive rate structure and planning encouragement from the City, all buildings constructed in our two greenfield urban centers have connected to DE. MDE has always invested in Sector Coupling assets to increase production efficiency, lower emissions, and provide system flexibility and operational redundancy. In addition to hot water thermal storage, absorption cooling technology and dual fuel assets, MDE’s largest Sector Coupling investment from 2000 to 2014 was our 12 MW CHP fleet. CHP heat recovery dramatically increased hot water production efficiency that lowered emissions as compared to the status quo in-building heating plant efficiency. Our commitment to Sector Coupling is accelerating with heat pump investments including our 31.45 MW Wastewater Energy Transfer (WET) plant, the largest project of its type in the world.
Visit the project’s website here.
