dPoint – Saving You Money and the World at the Same Time

When you think about the amount of energy it takes to both heat and cool a building it seems obvious that improvements in this industry (heating, ventilation and air conditioning: HVAC) could result in significant reductions in energy consumption. According to CanmetEnergy, a division of Natural Resources Canada, our homes and buildings “account for approximately 50% of all energy consumed in Canada”. Innovation in this industry is in high demand and institutions like the Canadian Federal Government, along with a number of privately held technology firms, are working tirelessly to make an impact. CanmetEnergy believes that “energy efficiency and load management are the first steps in setting the stage for [a] sustainable future”. And GreenAngel Energy is proud to have one of its investee companies helping do exactly that.

DPoint Technolgies has been in business since 2005, developing and manufacturing its Energy Recovery Ventilators (ERV) for HVAC systems, as well energy efficient components for fuel cell technologies. The value proposition of dPoint’s ERVs is simple, the technology itself however is another story. For dPoint Technologies, providing their clients with ERVs that take necessary by-products like steam and heat and recover valuable energy from them, helping reduce the company’s strain on the grid and decreasing energy costs are what it is all about.

At the heart of dPoint’s technology is conservation. By reducing the demand for electricity from the grid, companies that adopt dPoint’s ERV technology for their HVAC systems are in essence conserving electricity via its inherit efficiencies. Tom Rand, a leader in climate change solutions, is a big proponent of technologies that create efficiencies and thus conserve energy. Rand believes that the “negawatt” (ever heard the expression “a penny saved is a penny earner”? Same concept but for energy, “a watt saved is a watt produced”) will have a very positive impact on our energy consumption as people wise up about climate change. Of course this is nothing new really. The hierarchy of the 3Rs has always promoted reduction as the first step before reuse and recycle.

So the value proposition is fairly easy to communicate. DPoint’s ERVs take by-products and reuse them to reduce energy consumption from the grid which saves the client money. The technology behind this however is a little more complicated. As outlined on their website, dPoint ERVs “reduce the load and energy consumption on a building’s HVAC system by recapturing the energy of the indoor space. Instead of releasing building energy to the outside, it is transferred across the polymer membrane in the dPoint ERV core to pre-heat or pre-cool and humidify or dehumidify the incoming air”. This membrane “is constructed from a composite of polymer materials that allows heat and water vapour to transfer from one air stream to another while preventing the cross-over of gases and contaminants such as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s), carbon dioxide, stale air, methane and odours”.

The beauty of dPoint’s technologies is that it does not require sacrifice. This is another concept that Rand celebrates in his book Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit. Efficiency does not have to mean sacrifice, in fact Rant believes it is only through delivering the same output but more efficiently that society will actually adopt these technologies. Society in general fights change so it is those developers of technology who can provide the same end result but through a more efficient process who will be the leaders in the shift towards lower consumption.