On a frosty, cobalt blue Sudbury morning, Richard Munn at the Greater Sudbury Housing Corporation won't complain too much about heating bills.
An innovative heating system installed on a high-rise apartment building in Greater Sudbury is producing real savings for the manager of technical service manager at the non-profit corporation.
Warm air is pumping into the 17-story building's common areas where a Toronto engineering company installed a system, known as the SolarWall, on the 36-year-old structure's south-facing wall.
Not yet a year into the installation, Munn projects a savings of between $20,000 and $25,000 a year in weening themselves off natural gas.
The SolarWall is the invention of John Hollick, president and CEO of Conserval Engineering, a 12-employee company in the north end Toronto.
It's a simple system designed for any large industrial or commercial building — factories, warehouses, schools, office buildings — where fans and ventilation suck in outside air.
Unlike solar photovoltaics that produce electricity, Hollick's SolarWall produces warm air.
In Sudbury, the SolarWall runs up in eight banks between the spaces of the apartment balconies. The heat off the wall is collected in the duct work and fed inside.
"Even with the fan not running it blasts hot air," said Munn. "We were up on the roof during construction and there was a lot of heat coming out."
The corporation took advantage of government energy incentives to defray 75 per cent of the entire design, engineering and installation costs of $180,000. Munn expects a two-year payback.
Another system is being installed on a second high-rise.
"What we really like about it is there's not a lot of intervention required. There's not a lot of moving parts. It's not a complicated system, it's just a hollow black box that heats the air up and goes into our regular mechanical system."
On a south-facing exterior, metal cladding system is mounted several centimetres out from the main wall (the distance depending on building size and the volume of air to be heated), creating an air cavity.
The cladding is perforated with several tiny openings. Outside air passes through and is heated by the sun on the metal. The pre-heated air is then drawn inside by normal building ventilation.
It can be painted black but all dark colours work almost as well.
Other local building operators have warmed to the idea. The City of Greater Sudbury installed SolarWalls at a waterfront treatment plant and a sewage treatment facility.
"It's a whole change in attitude and thinking now and that's going to happen in the building industry that's traditionally slow to adopt changes," said Hollick.
In extremely cold weather, it doesn't totally eliminate the need to heat with electrical and natural gas, but the system takes up a sizeable chunk.
On a -15 C day outside, the wall provides a 25 to 30 C temperature bump-up of warm air drawn inside. If it's slightly warmer, at O C, it covers all the inside heating.
Hollick touts his system as five times more energy efficient than solar panels and at a quarter of the cost. In converting light to energy, it works in the 50 to 80 per cent efficiency range, compared to photovoltaics at only six to 14 per cent.
The payback period on new construction ranges between zero and three years, especially if the metal cladding is substituted for brickwork. For a building retrofit, it's three to eight years.
Incentives offered through federal and provincial green grants can cover between half and three-quarters of installation costs.
Architects who incorporate the system into their design can obtain as many as five LEED points on a typical job, since it displaces natural gas and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Hollick designed the system 18 years ago, patented and trademarked it, and is quick to take legal action against any imitators.
"They are falling by the wayside very quickly," said Hollick, a civil engineer who started Conserval Engineering in 1977 with a couple of partners.
Conserval started off doing energy audits for commercial and industrial clients, selling products and various systems, solar heating being one.
Hollick embraced solar back in the 1970s, when he built experimental panels to heat an outdoor shower at his wife's family cabin near Killarney. It still works today.
The first commercial all-metal version was introduced in 1990. Ford Motor Company was the first client.
"They liked it so much we ended up solar heating seven of their factories in North America."
When first patent came through, he focussed the company on solar. Today, it's 90 per cent of the business.
His list of clients are impressive: Federal Express, General Motors, Bombardier, Boeing, Greater Toronto Airport Authority, and the U.S. Military.
Through the years, the popularity of solar thermal heating has ridden the waves of fuel prices. In late 1980's and early 1990's when prices stabilized and dropped, many solar companies went out of business.
Hollick's survived and as fuel prices have risen again, business has taken off. Though he is reluctant to disclose figures, sales are increasing 50 per cent every year.
"We're drinking from a fire hose right now, there's so much happening," he chuckles. He oversees an international network of agents, dealers and production house joint ventures for ongoing and upcoming projects in more than 30 countries.
His systems have ended up at the U.S. Research Station at the South Pole and in Canada's High Arctic. SolarWalls have been used in agriculture to dry coffee beans in Panama and Costa Rica, tea leaves in Asia and walnuts in California
Conserval has also won several awards from the U.S. Department of Energy, Popular Science magazine, Natural Resources Canada, and Hollick has won a Manning Award for Canadian Innovation.
The company's new product -- Photovoltaic/Thermal system (PVT) -- combines the two. The same wall produces both heat and electricity, by attaching photovoltaic solar panels to draw additional heat from the back of the array into the building.
A demo version was at the Beijing Olympics and another is being installed at Concordia University, their largest PVT in Canada.
He foresees the day when future building codes will require LEED design and some form of passive solar heating. All new commercial and industrial construction will require some kind of energy generation.
In the United Kingdom, buildings of more than 20,000-square-metres must have at least 10 per cent of on-site renewable energy. France and Spain are looking at 20 per cent as condition of a building permit.
Eventually, the technology will spread into home residential use, said Hollick.
"We will still need some electricity, but if can get half of energy on-site we'll make a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change."
solarwall.com
