Downtown Prince George

By Cheryl Jahn

District Energy System

Telus aims to join District Energy system

Mar 26, 2026 | 3:28 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – It all starts at Lakeland Mills on River Road. An underground loop made up of more than three kilometres of piping from the mill, delivering heat to Prince George’s Downtown Energy Centre, which pumps the hot water through the system. The whole concept of a district energy system was built in the first place on a major assumption.

“Because as it was being built back to a pre-2008, the expectation was that the price of natural gas was going to soar. And it didn’t,” says Councillor Garth Frizzell, who first broached the idea of capacity during a presentation to Council. “It really never went up. So it’s been hard to stay competitive with the regular price of natural gas. Now we’ll see what happens over the next few weeks.”

A dozen facilities are currently on the grid. Nine are civic facilities, the latest of which is the Canfor Leisure Pool.

“Having that to heat the new Canfor leisure pool made us eligible for green credits. And that was $10 million that we got just to help build the pool. And that kept us under budget.”

And Telus is looking to add to that fleet of facilities.

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“It is also great to see more customers coming on board with the utility because it is a clean, a green utility for heating,” says Frizzell.

But there are some constraints to consider of the system overall.

“Basically, the constraint right now is our peaking backup boiler system located on 2nd and George Street,” explains Blake McIntosh, Director of Civic Operations. “Currently we have two boilers that are rated for five megawatts of heat. So, anything above that would constrain our ability to provide heat should Lakeland have to do any maintenance or such for any extended period.”

Anything above that five megawatts would force the city to look at a backup system. But it is doable.

“There’s the existing pedestal there that we could add an existing boiler to increase it,” explains McIntosh. “But obviously there’s some kind of regulatory requirements as far as staffing now that we’ve achieved a certain level of heat production.”

While the pool was added to the grid a short time ago, the original piping was laid in 2012. It means that infrastructure is – like everything – aging. But on an up-note.

“I mean, with any of our underground infrastructure, it ages and has a life expectancy. We’re currently at 14 years. We’re expecting at least 25 years or beyond that,” says McIntosh. “So, it does have a leak detection system built in. Haven’t had any issues at all so far.”

The work to add the Telus tower to the grid is expected to take place this summer.