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SOLO District in Burnaby
Stratus Tower Office Space
Sky Villa in the Stratus Tower
SOLO Building
It runs in the family. Nat Bosa, founder of Bosa Development, has been a central figure in the creation of BC Hydro’s New Construction Program, which paves the way to Vancouver’s singular look and feel through such projects as Citygate at the east end of False Creek and Portico located in South Granville.
Now, son Jim Bosa’s company, Appia Development, is transforming a major corner in Burnaby into a hub of residential, office and commercial activity—all of it built to the highest standards of energy efficiency.
While always interested in sustainability, Nat Bosa has never before specifically targeted energy efficiency as a goal in his developments. But for SOLO District, located at the south west corner of Lougheed Highway and Willingdon, engineering firm Integral Group recommended he look at what could be accomplished by incorporating energy-saving measures from the ground up. Expected savings to be equivalent of powering 105 single-family homes a year “Integral told me about BC Hydro’s New Construction Program and explained the process, and how Hydro would pay the costs for Integral to do an energy-modeling study,” says Bosa. “And they would then be able to give me an estimate ahead of time of the possible energy savings we could achieve with specific energy-saving measures. And the savings were really, really good.”
Stratus is 45-storey tower made up mostly of residential units, with one floor of commercial space at the base that houses Whole Foods. For Phase 1 of SOLO District project, the energy-modeling study predicts energy savings of just over 1.16 million kilowatt hours per year over a similar building without the same energy-saving measures.
That’s enough to power more than 105 B.C. single-family homes for a year. It’s also enough, predicts Bosa, to convince a lot of people that they should come to SOLO District.
“Especially for the bigger office tenants, energy efficiency is key,” says Bosa. “Government, for example, is required to look for offices that reach the equivalent of at least LEED Gold. And many others, like engineering firms, want that level of sustainability and the lower operating costs they get with good energy efficiency as do many residential owners and tenants today. If I want additional marketability, if I want to compete, I’ve got to be ahead of the curve,” he says. Energy modeling study identified big savings via variable refrigerant flow system While variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems have been used in Europe and Asia for years—half of all medium-size buildings in Japan currently use VRF systems—they are relatively new here. This kind of system can modulate the output of an outdoor HVAC unit and share heat between multiple heating and cooling zones by transferring wasted heat from indoor units in cooling mode to spaces requiring heating.
“For the right project, a VRF system can provide the ultimate in energy conservation,” says BC Hydro specialist engineer Bojan Andjelkovic. “The energy-modeling study showed that the VRF alone will help Stratus save over one million kilowatt hours of energy over a year compared to a conventional HVAC system.”
According to Andjelkovic, “Energy modeling is the best way to find out what systems are the best match for any new building. Modeling programs can run whole-year detailed simulations to show how a particular building will perform at different times of day and night, and in different climates. You can see what happens if you change a building’s orientation, shape, mass, envelope or if you use different building systems and energy sources.”
For Bosa, the modeling study was certainly an eye-opener.
“The engineers pulled out elements I wouldn’t have thought of,” he says. “I thought I knew quite a bit about how to save energy, but they found more savings than I would ever have on my own. They showed me the dollars and cents results.
Bosa adds: “I’ve recommended the New Construction Program to other developers. I’ve told them, you need energy efficiency for marketability, so you might as well take advantage of the incentives BC Hydro offers to do an energy study and install the energy-saving measures. It reduces the pain from having to make the extra investment in those measures. Plus it’s just really exciting to see what you can do today.”
Find out more about energy modeling and incentives for energy-efficiency measures on our New Construction Program pages, or call 1 866 522 4713.