The 180 buildings in Toronto have abandoned the use of energy-intensive air-conditioning, instead pumping cold water from the depths of Lake Ontario through pipes on the walls and floors for cooling.
These include City Hall, Toronto General Hospital, hotels, data centers, and the Scotiabank Arena, home to the Raptors basketball team-a total of 54 million square feet of real estate can save 90,000 MWh of electricity annually, enough to power 25,000 homes .
Toronto's Deep Lake Water Cooling (DLWC) system is the largest of its kind on earth.
It relies on three pipes located 3.5 miles south of the city and 280 feet at the bottom of the lake. These pipes absorb 39°F (4°C) water, then pump it to the central station, and then transport it to the building. The warm water leaving the building is pumped back into the lake to make up for the difference and take away the heat it has absorbed.
At first, the 170 million Canadian dollars (133 million US dollars) DLWC system built and managed by Enwave was difficult to find customers in the city, but after initial proof of energy conservation (Scotiabank reduces energy by 3 million kilowatt hours per year), they have Since then the number has continued to increase.
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A new plan to increase town capacity by 60% proves its popularity as a low-carbon cooling system.
"This is a huge investment," Enwave President Carlyle Coutinho told the Washington Post about the upcoming 100 million Canadian dollar (78 million U.S. dollars) project. "Maintaining business growth without increasing the base load will be challenging."
Another large expansion project in Toronto is called The Well. Enwave will use 2 million gallons of cold water tanks from the lake to create a heat storage system that can store energy at night during off-peak hours, alleviating grid pressure and reducing costs.
The company said this will open the door to another 17 million square feet of real estate.
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DLWC is not the only way to cool a building through water; another involves the use of large water tanks to evaporate water as a means of heat dissipation. However, this results in a large amount of water. Compared with evaporative cooling, DLWC can retain 220 million gallons of water in lakes, pipelines, or underground.
DLWC is not available in every city or building, but some buildings, such as the million-square-foot HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong, are cooled by sea water.
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