Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has enlisted influential partners in the private and public buildings sectors to promote the latest update of its freely available energy management software platform. RETScreen Expert — version 8.1 of the analytical tool for planning and monitoring energy projects that NRCan first developed and offered in 1998 — was released in September 2021, promising new capabilities for assessing technological and financial viability and verifying installed performance and energy savings.
“The new RETScreen Expert represents the next generation of RETScreen, expanding the software from a decision-making model for specialist engineers to an intelligent decision support tool for a much broader range of stakeholders over the entire project life cycle,” states REEEP (Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership), a fund company targeting low-carbon and energy-efficient technologies, which helped to underwrite the updated version.
To engage that broader pool of stakeholders, the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Canada will be sponsoring 10 free webinars in March. Energy management specialists, Stephen Dixon and Michel Parent, will lead participants in a hands-on demonstration of RETScreen Expert’s benchmarking and analysis functions for individual buildings and across portfolios, and walk them through the steps for data collection, reporting and visualization. The webinars will also explore how RETScreen can be used to identify and build business cases for potential energy projects and/or harnessed to inform day-to-day operational decisions.
Direct registration portals are available for each of the 10 webinars, which will occur across the six Canadian time zones:
- Newfoundland and Labrador, March 1, 9:30 a.m., local time
- Nova Scotia, March 2, 9 a.m., local time
- New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, March 3, 9 a.m., local time
- Quebec, March 4, 9 a.m., local time
- Ottawa, March 9, 9 a.m., local time
- Manitoba, March 10, 9 a.m., local time
- Saskatchewan, March 11, 9 a.m., local time
- Calgary, March 29, 9 a.m., local time
- Edmonton, March 30, 9 a.m., local time
- British Columbia, March 31, 9 a.m. local time
Meanwhile, the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care (CCGHC) will serve as the delivery agent for RETScreen Expert training to facilities management teams in the health care sector. To help introduce and demonstrate the software platform’s updated applications, hospitals in three provinces will draw on different components of RETScreen’s analytical tools with technical guidance from David Elfstrom, an engineer and certified energy manager who has extensive experience with the software.
This includes: financial analysis for high-efficiency heating equipment at Mattawa Hospital and a retrofit feasibility study at the Woodstock General Hospital in Ontario; analysis of whole-building energy performance within the Providence Health Care network in British Columbia; and analysis within le centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux (CISSS) de la Montérégie-Ouest in Quebec.
In all cases, the work will be conducted in facilities that have not employed earlier versions of RETScreen. Elfstrom will provide a written project analysis and lead tutorials for each of the participating health care facilities. CCGHC also plans to produce a series of case studies to highlight experiences and findings at each site.
“This made-in-Canada software is well suited to assisting Canada’s health care facility and energy managers to take a data-driven approach to managing the energy in their facilities,” observes Neil Ritchie, executive director of the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care. “It enables decision-makers to identify and assess the viability of potential energy efficiency, renewable energy and cogeneration projects, and to measure and verify the actual and ongoing energy performance.”
