Geothermal heat keeps SCCC warm
Loch Sheldrake – In the mechanical room below Building H at Sullivan County Community College, big pipes wrapped in thick, white insulation run through the ceiling, heading up toward classrooms.
The thick, curved pipes and the massive cubes of the heat exchangers look like a cross between Willy Wonka's factory and the Yellow Submarine. They are part of a geothermal heating system that has cut SCCC's energy costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"What I like about it is, it's clean," says Brian Pine, SCCC's director of buildings and grounds. "You're not burning anything. You're just transferring heat through a mechanism."
The system pulls heat from ground water to heat buildings. It covers all but a couple of buildings on campus. It's one of three geothermal systems in the SUNY system, and one of the largest in the state.
When SCCC created a new master plan for the college in 1997, the board decided to take a risk. To cut operating costs, it would install a geothermal heating and cooling system to replace an electric heating system that dated back to when the college was built in the 1970s.
It wasn't an easy decision to make. The $10 million project included removing asbestos and replacing the ceilings in the classroom buildings. The geothermal work included digging 200 wells, each 400 feet deep; building the system's pump-house heart; installing all those underground pipes and 153 heat pumps around campus.
The project began in 2000 and finished in 2001. Now SCCC's annual electricity costs are about $400,000, with total energy costs of $500,000 last year. In the 1980s and 1990s, SCCC was paying about $700,000 in electricity costs.
The system is run by computer, so Pine and building supervisor George Amaral can control it from home if needed.
They're holding down costs even more with a demand-limiting system installed earlier this year. It lets them control the total amount of kilowatt hours of electricity used on-campus without any one building getting too cold.
Geothermal systems can be pricey to install, Pine said, but they save money in the long run. Heating costs are lower, and maintenance costs are lower than electrical, gas or oil-powered systems because there are fewer moving parts.
Other colleges and organizations have also gone with geothermal. The Mohonk Preserve Visitor Center in Gardiner uses geothermal, as do the Black Rock Forest Center for Science and Education in Cornwall and 66 businesses around the state. Two other county community colleges, Cayuga and Columbia, also use geothermal systems.
"With fuel prices the way they are today, it's getting more and more popular," said Tom Collins of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. The authority helped fund SCCC's geothermal retrofit with a $250,000 grant. "We're getting more and more requests for information on geothermal."
How geothermal works
Geothermal depends on two important facts of nature: Heat will flow from warmer areas to cooler areas; and once you're deeper than 5 feet or so underground, the water temperature is constant, about 45 to 50 degrees in northern latitudes.
In winter, a geothermal system captures the heat from the groundwater and pumps it into a heat exchanger. The heat exchanger absorbs the groundwater's heat and pumps it out to heat the building. In summer, the system absorbs heat from the building's air and cools the air with groundwater for an air-conditioning effect.
For more information on geothermal energy or how you can save energy: NYSERDA at 866-697-3732 or www.nyserda.org; or the Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium at www.geoexchange.org or 888-255-4436.
For a graphic describing the system, visit http://www.geoexchange.org/images/Home%20GX%20wntr.jpg|
der
Written by Guest on 2005-11-27 09:51:26
I am looking to install my own germal heating in my house. I am looking for a DIY guide to geothermal heating and can't seem to find one anywhere. Does anyone know of suck a site?
Kind regards,
Der |
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