GeoExchange BC Board member project in Innovation Magazine
GeoExchange BC
Vancouver Island University GeoExchange: Second Life for legacy mineworkings
Innovation Magazine, May/June issue
2018-2019 Project Highlights
Mine labourers in the early 1900s, toiling in dark, damp, and hazardous underground workings of the Wakesiah Colliery, couldn’t have imagined they were unwittingly developing core infrastructure for a future renewable energy system that would heat and cool university campus buildings. Nanaimo’s Vancouver Island University overlies legacy underground workings of the former Wakesiah Coal Mine that operated from 1918 to 1930.
When mining ended, dewatering pumps were stopped and the mineworkings were flooded with water. Investigations determined favourable potential for using the accumulated water as a renewable heat source for a geoexchange district energy system.
In late-2018, the first phase of the system was commissioned, thus completing the transition of legacy infrastructure originally serving one of the most carbon intensive forms of energy to, nearly a century later, serving one of the cleanest forms of energy.
(Lead Consultant: Falcon Engineering: Jeff Quibell, P.Eng., Don Poole, P.Eng., Richard Gaab, EIT.)
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