NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) - New London officials are looking to tap geothermal energy to heat and cool municipal and commercial buildings.
The Day of New London reports (https://bit.ly/1iShgir ) that the city has been approached about a plan that would outfit schools and municipal buildings with geothermal energy systems to reduce heating and cooling costs by 40 percent to 60 percent over oil- or natural gas-powered systems.
“It’s before preliminary, if that’s possible,” said Tim Hanser, the city’s public works director. “We are interested in finding alternative energy sources to reduce our carbon footprint and our energy costs.”
A city-based workforce development company proposes to obtain financing for the new system, and the city would pay the company for the heating and cooling provided through a 20-year contract.
The city would save money in the long run and JDN Associates, the workforce development firm, would turn a profit from the city’s payments. JDN would obtain financing for the new system and the city would pay the company for heating and cooling in a 20-year contract that Mark Roberts, president of the Hartford-based company, said would be significantly less than it currently pays.
The cost of a geothermal system for a 100,000-square-foot building would be roughly $1 million. An elementary school and surrounding buildings could be a pilot project showing the potential for retrofitting buildings for geothermal and that job training would be an important component.
“We want to build a local geothermal workforce,” Roberts said in a phone interview.
Four of five schools in neighboring Waterford have geothermal heating systems that rely on underground sources of energy.
The system extracts heat from the ground through 150 wells 500 feet under the school parking lot. In the winter, cold water circulates through pipes to the wells where the temperature rises to that of the surrounding bedrock and soil.
The water is pumped back into the buildings, where heat pumps extract the energy of the warmed water to produce warm air for the building.
In the summer months, the system works in reverse to cool the building.
The main cost of running the system is the electricity required to run the heat exchange pumps.
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Information from: The Day, https://www.theday.com
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