Stagner said that Stanford's system will be different in the way it will provide both warmth and cooling in the same season -- unlike Ball State, which will need a lot of heat in the winter and a lot of cooling in the summer. By recycling waste heat in the system, the university will reduce energy use by 70 percent.
"For us, in a milder climate, we have a tremendous amount of waste heat," he said. "Let's go ahead and reuse that."
Universities, especially suburban or rural ones, make good settings for renewable energy projects, said Robert Bell, project architect for the geothermal conversion of two residence halls at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio -- the two oldest buildings on campus.
A learning experience for undergraduates
The largest field of boreholes is next to the brick smokestacks of two of the coal-fired boilers that were installed in 1944. Two more were added 11 years later, as the campus expanded after World War II. It wasn't until about 50 years later, two decades after EPA began establishing regulations for emissions from coal-fired power plants, that the university began to evaluate the condition and remaining life of the boilers.
In the 2005 to 2007 biennium, the Indiana State General Assembly granted the university nearly $45 million for a circulating fluidized bed boiler to co-fire 30 percent biomass with 70 percent coal. Ball State found itself in a financial predicament: The boiler cost $20 million to $25 million more than what was appropriated. Although the capital cost of the geothermal project was higher, it provided $2 million in savings.
So Lowe and his colleagues began to look into alternatives. Although Indiana is not located in a prime location for geothermal energy (most of the potential is in the western United States), the technology has existed since the 1940s. Then there was the matter that EPA had begun crafting its Boiler MACT regulations for 187 different hazardous air pollutants.
"We thought, wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to build those [pollution controls]?" he said.
Outside of Ball State's own commitments to invest, funding for the second phase is still unclear, said Lowe. There have been no donors or foundation support at this point.
"We'd hope that the U.S. DOE would continue [to support] this type of opportunity," he said. Last year, federal money stopped flowing to the project. The university will have to look to Indiana or internally but will continue to search for federal grants and donors, Lowe said.
In the meantime, the system is a learning project. Geology students monitor the ground temperature for class projects. The university has engaged several other departments on campus -- from construction management to architecture -- to use the system for student theses. The fields with all the holes are also used to recruit new students.
"It's another thing that makes them happy to have come to Ball State University," added Lowe. "It's their world in about 20, 30 years."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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5 Comments
Add CommentG.W. Bush has had the same system at his ranch in Texas for years...it's a great idea and saves a ton of money!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe public utility I work for is offering pretty substantial incentives to home owners to go geothermal. It has payed off with an actual drop in summer and winter peak energy use, which is when energy costs spike. The savings are good enough to cover the costs of the incentive program.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost so called geothermal systems do not directly heat or cool buildings. What they (and from the description I assume that's the case with Ball State) do is provide a small amount of preheating or precooling of the supply input.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat this means is the geothermal heated or cooled liquid is placed in close proximity to the main supply in a heat exchanger so that the municipal water feed is heated or cooled before entering the boiler or a/c unit.
The building is _not_ heated or cooled by this process. The energy needed by the boiler to heat the untreated water supply is reduced by the amount of heat transferred to it by the geothermal system. If the geothermal system reduces the main supply's amount of required temperature change from 50 degrees to 40 degrees change it still has to be processed to a 40 degree change. This improves the efficiency of the system and reduces the cost of operation but it definitely does not on its own heat or cool the building.
The question that arises is: do the savings from the preheating or precooling of the main supply justify the expense of the total lifetime cost of operation of the geothermal system?
I don't know enough about Ball State's system to say but generally it's only economical when dealing with new construction. The article describes a retrofit so I doubt that it pays for itself especially since if it did I'm sure Ball State would be telling us all about the economics of it rather than the look at what we did factor.
Hey northerguy - this is a lot cooler than you think. While some systems just use ground temp to "pretreat" water - the majority of Geothermal systems are based on heat pump technology. There is some outside energy needed (e.g. electricity to run fans, pumps, compressors motors) but the large majority of total energy (Btus)needed for HVAC loads comes from using the ground as a source (or sink). The net imported energy to the site is vastly reduced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are systems that are genuinely full geothermal processes but it seems to me that there are very few that have been installed after construction of the building. I doubt if there are any that have been done in that fashion and are or could be economical. (in north america, at least).
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