Feature
Story
Building Up a
(More Efficient)
Head of Steam:
Enwave upgrades
district heating plant
Richard Parrish
This past year, Enwave Energy Corp. completed an extensive upgrading of its Pearl Street
Station district heating plant in downtown Toronto to make it more efficient
and to meet new environmental challenges brought about by the construction of
the new 66-story Shangri-La Hotel across
the street.
Completed in 1968, Pearl is a peaking plant generally used only on the
coldest days, when demand is heaviest.
(The company’s two primary plants provide more than 2. 5 billion lb of steam
annually to 140-plus buildings, covering
approximately 40 million sq ft.) The
eight huge boilers at Pearl Street have a
capacity of 800,000 lb/hr of steam. A
highly visible part of the facility is a
stack that reaches nearly 300 ft into the
sky, just a hundred feet or less from the
new CAN$430 million ($424.48 million)
high-rise building, which is scheduled to
open in August 2012.
The first 17 floors of the new structure will be occupied by the luxury five-star hotel, while floors 18-66 will be
upscale residences, nearly all featuring
balconies that overlook the beautiful city
– and Pearl’s stack. The close proximity
of the tower required Enwave to accelerate plans to comply with new emissions
standards that won’t become mandatory
for several more years.
Courtesy Super Radiator Coils.
The new luxury Shangri-La Hotel is currently under construction across the street from Enwave’s Pearl
Street Station with its gray stack (behind the sign on the plant building).
The tower’s close proximity
required Enwave to accelerate
plans to comply with new
emissions standards that won’t
become mandatory until 2020.
Early results for the CAN$20 million
district heating plant upgrade are impres-
