Construction on a new geo-exchange system to help Princeton University cut down on power plant energy needs and increase its pace toward Net Zero is under way.
The Ivy League school has contracted with numerous construction and engineering firms to bring heating and cool capacity to buildings on the New Jersey campus. The system includes hundreds of holes dug to between 600 and 800 feet below ground level.
Burns & McDonnell is handling engineering and program management. Other companies involved in the project include Whiting-Turner and Salas O'Brien.
“This is a situation where we’re able to capture energy that might otherwise be wasted and use it later,” Justin Grissom, a project manager for Kansas City-based Burns and McDonnell, said in a university story on the project. “Basically, the ground becomes a big battery, storing heat energy. It’s not an electrical battery, but a thermal battery.”
The two geo-exchange system have been planned for years as Princeton aims for net-zero carbon emissions from campus activities by its 300th anniversary in 2046. The school is also building a Central Utility building that should be completed by the fall.
The geo-exchange systems are expected for completion next year. Geo-exchange systems are dug more shallow than geothermal heat projects and use more moderate ground level locations to exchange heating and cooling from buildings.
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Princeton currently has a steam distribution plant and cogeneration power facility to generate electricity on campus. Some of the facility’s components, however, date back to World War I era.
The school is investing several hundred million dollars on the Thermally Integrated Geo-Exchange Resource (TIGER) facility.
“We always talk about Princeton as a lighthouse institution that people pay attention to,” said Forrest Meggers, an associate professor of architecture and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, who also serves as co-chair of the Princeton Sustainability Committee. As a result, the University was “willing to take the more expensive pathway, because it’s important,” Meggers was quoted on the Princeton University website.
The Tiger system is being located across from Lake Carnegie.
Click here to read more about Princeton’s geo-exchange projects.
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(Rod Walton, senior editor for EnergyTech, is a 14-year veteran of covering the energy industry both as a newspaper and trade journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]).
