“It’s the smartest thing we’ve done,” says Aron Hoff, Meyers Fruit Farms Inc.’s manager as he describes the company’s decision to undertake an energy curtain retrofit for its greenhouse in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. The $100,000 investment is well on its way to saving the company nearly $40,000 a year in energy costs.

Meyers Fruit Farms Inc. is a greenhouse and fruit farm operation producing seasonal and holiday flowers in its greenhouse. In operation year-round, the 37 000 square metre (m²) greenhouse maintains a daytime and nighttime temperature of 19°C. Prior to the retrofit, the greenhouse consumed about 39 000 gigajoules (GJ) in natural gas and about 2300 GJ in electricity, for an annual energy bill of about $560,000.

Dura-Lite Heat Transfer Products Ltd. replaced its old, inefficient boiler, and the energy data show a reduction in natural gas use of nearly 50 percent in early 2009 compared with the same period in 2008. “Our forecast was 21.6 percent, so we are extremely pleased with the results,” says Kelly Sissons, the company’s president. The retrofit, supported by NRCan’s ecoENERGY Retrofit Incentive for Industry, cost about $72,000 and had a net simple payback of just less than five years.

Calgary-based Dura-Lite Heat Transfer Products Ltd., a CIPEC Leader in the Transportation Equipment Manufacturing sector, manufactures after-market charge air coolers, mainly for the turbo-diesel-powered bus and truck markets. “The 4645-m² facility consumed about 6500 GJ of natural gas annually before the retrofit, and the boiler used 95 percent of that,” says Dele Ajele, the company’s engineering manager.