R. Garcia
Energy Project
Our group has decided to research energy that is being used on campus. I have focused more closely on the heat being used here at Fort Lewis College. There are problems with heating like, overuse of having the heat on all of the time, leaving doors open and having operable windows. This just increases the budget that is spent on excessive use of heat when we could use that money to build more efficient boilers or operable windows. Throughout my research, I have found alternate ways in using more efficient heating systems.
Information
Trying to find the necessary information of the usage of the heat Fort Lewis’ campus was extremely hard because of the fact that there has not been much research on the topic. I spoke with Mark Gutt over the phone and he was very helpful, yet he could not give me any statistical information. I found that there are about 55 buildings on campus. There are 19 meters that run particular buildings that are run by gas. There are systems in which are run by a central heating system for numerous buildings such as the Bayder/Sheridans as well as Sage, Noble, the Art building, and the Concert Hall.
Alternatives
Most of the buildings have old boilers that are less efficient than the newer ones. I’m not quite sure if we have recently put in new boilers or not. I have done some research on alternative ways of using more efficient heating systems. Combined heat and power (CHP) generates electricity and thermal energy in a single integrated system. CHP captures the heat that would normally be rejected in central power plants, which Fort Lewis uses, and releases that into usable heat and energy. CHP is more cost effective; it reduces the amount of emissions released into the atmosphere and converts1/3 of fuel potential energy into usable energy. A lot of colleges are now beginning to use (CHP) heating systems, like, Suny College, University of North Carolina, and Princeton. . They hope to reduce the use of energy by 35% by 2010.
The CHP systems are expensive, but not that expensive to maintain. Suny College spent one million dollars to get this system put in which I don’t think FLC would spend on this new technology, or maybe we don’t have that kind of money to spend in the first place.
Actually, the boilers that we do have on campus aren’t that inefficient. But the CHP system will save a lot more energy than regular boilers.
Yes, we could spend more money on newer alternatives to saving the amount of heat we use on campus, yet our campus doesn’t have the budget to get this efficient technology. Questions that I could not find or didn’t bother in trying to find (to be completely honest) are: what laws does the state of Colorado have on heat? how long do boilers last and does our campus wait until the boilers completely give out or is there a certain time frame in which to get rid of?
Bibliography
Neal, R. and Spurr, Mark. “Combined Heat and Power: Capturing Wasted Energy.” May
1999. Dec. 15 2004.
Williams, Colleen Madonna Flood. “Campus CHP Systems: Economical and
Environmentally Friendly.” Jan/Feb 2004. Dec. 15 2004.
<www.stormh2o.org/de_0401_campus.html>