Surrey orders $5 million-plus sewer heat recovery system for district energy network

SHARC International Systems said it received a purchase order worth more than $5 million (currency not specified by SHARC) from the City of Surrey on October 22 for a sewer heat recovery project serving Surrey City Centre. The company says the order followed a competitive procurement and is its largest to date. The release describes a purchase order for equipment and associated services; it is not an engineering, procurement and construction award for the whole district energy project.

The order covers three SHARC 880 wastewater energy transfer systems with a combined designed thermal capacity of 6 megawatts. The systems are expected to process about 12,000 litres of wastewater per minute. SHARC says the equipment will screen wastewater and transfer heat to an ambient-temperature loop linked to heat pumps at West Village Energy Centre, about two kilometres away. This is heat recovery from a regional sewer main, not electricity generation from wastewater.

The City’s stated project objective is to supply more than half of Surrey City Centre’s annual heating needs and reduce reliance on natural gas across a district energy network that already serves 49 buildings. That is a forecast from the project description, not an operating result. The facility is designed to expand in phases to about 27 megawatts as demand grows, but additional equipment would require future procurement; the current order covers the initial 6-megawatt system.

SHARC expects project revenue in the second half of 2027 and into 2028 under the current schedule. Equipment fabrication and delivery are planned for late 2027 to early 2028, followed by construction and commissioning under the City’s schedule. The company says the order will add more than $5 million (currency not specified by SHARC) to its fourth-quarter 2026 sales-order backlog, a non-IFRS measure. The purchase-order value is not the same as revenue already recognized or cash already collected.

The company’s scope includes shell-and-tube heat exchangers, wastewater screening, pumping and controls, plus start-up, commissioning, operator training and technical support. Remote monitoring and diagnostics are also part of the described system. The release says the configuration is tailored to the project’s wastewater, capacity and maintenance requirements. It does not disclose the full City contract, payment milestones, total project cost, or the split of public contributions among federal, provincial, municipal and utility partners.

The order follows a competitive procurement process, according to SHARC. The company describes Surrey’s installation as a multi-system application of its wastewater heat-transfer technology and points to earlier district-energy projects in Vancouver and elsewhere. Those examples are company-listed portfolio references; they do not establish the performance of the Surrey system, which remains to be built and commissioned.

The purchase order is a new commercial milestone for the supplier and a step in the City’s planned district-energy project. The evidence available in the release supports the order value threshold, equipment count, design capacity and projected timetable. It does not yet support claims that the facility has cut emissions, displaced a measured amount of natural gas, delivered expected savings, or reached its potential expansion capacity.