During 2017–2020, Vilhelmina People's House participated in the energy projects Ecofast and Everterm-Geo, with the goal that the building will reduce its needs for externally supplied energy and achieve better indoor comfort.
The projects are part-financed, inter alia, by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and aimed to develop and validate innovative energy efficiency technologies.
The prerequisites for the project were that the property leaked a lot of energy, with sky-high energy bills as a result.
In general, it can be said that municipal properties erected between the 1950s and 1990s have problems with energy leakage
The main focus of the projects was to reduce the amount of externally supplied energy, provide better control of the economy, increase comfort in the premises and, not least, reduce climate impact. These projects have shown that it is possible for energy efficiency – even old properties.
The projects have given the parent company Ecoclime the opportunity to install all their system solutions for circular energy, indoor climate and property automation to test and validate how they interact in a large property. The projects have also involved the development of existing systems and new innovations.
Vilhelmina Folkets Hus houses bathhouses, libraries, bowling alleys, conference facilities and offices for 40 employees. This type of complex property has a lot of excess heat that leaks out if it is not taken care of. This can be 25-30% of a normal property's energy consumption that is flushed out into the sewer or disappears into the air. With Evertherm and Ecoclime's technologies, the building now takes care of and returns that energy to the property's heating system.
To make Vilhelmina Folkets Hus less dependent on externally supplied energy, Evertherm's system for recycling energy from wastewater has been installed, geothermal holes have been drilled and energy and solar collectors installed.
The proportion of externally supplied energy for heating has decreased by about 70% partly because energy from wastewater now recirculates up to 20 times. With a common outbound drain line, the Evertherm system takes advantage of all wastewater and recycles a total of up to 95% of the energy contained in the wastewater. The largest amount comes from the property's bathhouse where Evertherm SEW recycles an average of 226 kWh of thermal energy per day.
The recycling corresponds to just over 82 MWh on an annual basis and a reduced environmental footprint equivalent to just over 7 tons of CO2 equivalent in emissions.
