Stepwise apartment retrofit for savings and comfort
Building Details
Old System: Electric baseboard heaters
2590 Argyle Rd, Mississauga
12-storey multi-unit residential building (127 units)
Retrofit Project
New System: Daikin cold climate air source heat pumps, LED lighting upgrade
Partners:
Bondi Energy and Ranee Management
Summary: Heat pumps meet heating needs in cold climate.
In August 2020, TAF’s Retrofit Accelerator team joined project partners to retrofit a 12-storey 1965 apartment building in Mississauga, Ontario.
The building had recently completed an LED lighting system upgrade, and we aimed to further reduce energy consumption and emissions by introducing energy-efficient heating and cooling, leading to a 27% overall reduction.
What We Did
- Installed Daikin cold climate air source heat pumps (CC-ASHP) in each building suite. The condenser for each unit is located on the balconies, with individual heads in the living areas and one in each bedroom.
- Used heat load calculations to adequately size heat pump units for the individual apartment suites.
- Monitored the common area lighting upgrade from CFL to LED.
- Measured performance from February 2021 to January 2022.
Key Takeaways
- Air source heat pumps can significantly reduce heating demand and adequately heat and cool apartments in Canada’s cold climate.
- Sizing heat pump systems can be complex and deserves significant consideration to ensure performance. Using engineering heat loss calculations resulted in the right size system for the apartment suites, which are smaller than most single-family homes.
- The addition of features like cooling need adequate planning and funding from government. Cooling adds electricity load, but also comes with many public benefits, like health and comfort for residents, building resilience, and asset value for building owners.
Results: Project achieved 89% of its energy savings target.
System Performance
89% of expected savings target achieved
22% reduction in total building electricity
46% reduction in heating energy
25.6% reduction in winter demand
Heat pumps successfully reduced winter peak demand in the building by 25.6%. Summer peak demand was also reduced slightly, however, as cooling was not enabled widely on this site, actual summer demand reduction was hard to gauge. Overall, these results support the idea that heat pump installations reduce peak demand.
This project realized significant savings, but were slightly below target as the initial savings estimates did not adequately reflect in-field operational performance of the heat pumps. As we execute more heat pump installations, we’re able leverage our experience to get closer to realistic in-field performance values in our savings projections.
The lighting retrofit contributed only 1% to the total building energy savings, meeting just 20% of its expected target. Our hypothesis for the lower-than-expected result is that there were previously a high number of burnt-out bulbs pre-retrofit. Further, we used IPMVP Option C (whole building energy) for this calculation, which may not have been granular enough to evaluate accurately. In an ideal scenario, more data would be available on each measure to accurately calculate savings.
Resident Satisfaction
18% increase in residents’ thermal comfort in summer
23.4% decrease in residents’ thermal comfort in winter
25.6% of residents perceived an improvement post-retrofit
63% of residents found the heat pumps easy to use
Resident satisfaction was affected because the property manager only enabled cooling through a paid opt-in program. Summer thermal comfort increased only slightly, because the majority of residents did not opt in. Therefore, use of active conditioning (such as portable ACs and fans), and passive conditioning approaches (such as window and balcony door opening) saw little change. Some residents felt their spaces to be cooler in the winter months. This can partly be explained by the perception of moving air; it can often take time to adjust when moving from radiant heating to a heat pump system.
Recommendations: for future multi-family retrofits
- Stepwise measures require detailed record-keeping to accurately assess savings.
We recommend keeping detailed records and using granular measurement and verification best practices when applicable. See TAF’s guide to measurement and verification.
- Right sizing is worth the investment to ensure performance.
We recommend using engineering heat loss calculations to identify the right-sized heat pump system, especially in multi-family buildings.
- Ensure building owners and operators are willing to enable cooling access without a cost to residents.
This is a way to increase resident comfort and satisfaction and reduce peak demand.
TAF’s Retrofit Accelerator puts ideas into action.
We provide expert services to deliver deep energy retrofits in the multi-family building sector in the GTHA.
We collaborate with building owners, utilities, governments, residents and other stakeholders to maximize the health, social, environmental, and economic outcomes of retrofits.
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