Bluenose Academy – Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

Background

With the Old Town of Lunenburg - a UNESCO World Heritage Site – in close proximity, the Bluenose Academy design team, consisting of Architecture49 and Dumac Energy, was tasked with designing a contemporary school building within a heritage context and achieving LEED® Gold certification.

Faced with rising and unpredictable fuel oil costs and with natural gas not available at the site, the team was charged with integrating innovative renewable energy technologies into the building design. The team ultimately settled on using wood pellets as a fuel source as a more economical and price stable option.  

The Viessmann solution

A Viessmann Pyrot KRT-540 wood-fired boiler (rated at 1843 MBH) was commissioned as the system’s primary source of space and DHW heating. The fully-automatic Pyrot utilizes the industry’s most advanced combustion technology, triple-pass heat exchanger and modulating output control to achieve an efficiency of up to 85% while keeping emissions to a minimum. Its state-of-the-art system monitoring and safety equipment ensure safe and reliable operation.

The heating system also includes a Vitorond 200, VD2-560 oil-fired boiler (rated at 1941 MBH) to provide backup and additional capacity during peak loads, as well as six Vitosol 200-F SV2 flat plate solar thermal collectors.

Wood pellets are stored in a 26-ton capacity steel silo and delivered to the boiler by the Pyrot’s feed auger. When fuel gasification and combustion are complete, an automated deashing system extracts ashes from the combustion chamber and transfers them to an ash bin.  

The results

• The integration of a biomass boiler and solar heating system into the mechanical and electrical system in addition to a good building envelope assisted in optimizing the overall energy performance in the Bluenose Academy. Based on MNECB 1997 designed energy costs we were able to obtain 65% savings of which 46.7% of the buildings energy is provided by on-site renewable energy.
    
• Annual CO2 reductions: 550.5 tons*
  (* Numbers based on MNECB 1997 designed energy costs and Environment Canada’s GHG Inventory 1990-2002 Data with an adjustment factor to account for the line losses and upstream emissions.)
    
• Bluenose Academy was the recipient of the Canadian Solar Thermal Project of the Year by the Canadian Solar Industries Association (CanSIA) in 2012.  

Project details