jillithian | Geoexchange system saves 95%

This is awesome:

from St. Cloud Times website

Athletic complex upgrades bring savings
By Lawrence Schumacher • lschumacher@stcloudtimes.com • December 3, 2008

If not for the deep fryer in the concession stand, natural gas would no longer be needed at St. Cloud’s Municipal Athletic Complex.

“We’ve had a normal gas bill of $14,000 or $15,000 a month, but this month I figure it’ll be more like $200 or $300,” said Todd Bissett, arena operations manager at the MAC.

Bissett, other city officials, builders and contractors and some curious residents showed up Tuesday at Dave Torrey Arena to see what’s making the MAC not a little, but a lot “greener” these days.

The answer is a $1.7 million geoexchange heating and cooling system installed during the summer and fall. It is ready for this winter’s skating season.

The system will cut natural gas use by 95 percent, electricity use by 30 percent, save 4 million gallons of water and eliminate 300,000 pounds of greenhouse gases while saving the city money, said Bob Swanger, vice president for Harris Companies, the group that sold the technology to the city.

Swanger said the system will be used for climate control in the Torrey and Ritsche arenas and to make the ice for both of them. It may be the first of its kind in place in the United States.

“There are other arenas that use geothermal, but this one captures the waste heat generated and reuses it, instead of releasing it,” he said. “I don’t think there’s another one quite like this.”

Former Herberger’s President George Torrey and his wife, Shirley, whose family donated $250,000 to the MAC’s 1997 expansion, marveled at the improvements on Tuesday.

“All the hours I spent here with my kids in youth hockey, it wasn’t anything like this,” George Torrey said. “This is impressive.”

Bottom line

The 37-year-old heating and cooling system hadn’t been replaced since the MAC’s construction and was on its last legs when Harrington Companies made its presentation at a professional association meeting Bissett attended last year, said Lyle Mathiasen, Civic Facilities director.

Despite an initial investment that cost nearly double that of a natural gas-based system, the geoexchange system will save the city an estimated $120,000 in energy costs in its first year and $20,000 in operating costs, he said.

The city is guaranteed to save nearly as much per year on energy costs as it will pay in a structured mortgage, and once it is paid off, the savings go entirely toward the city’s bottom line, Mayor Dave Kleis said.

“Not only does this benefit the environment, it is beneficial to the city and it’s beneficial to our bottom line,” he said.

Going forward

St. Cloud will seek federal grants for green public building renovations through a program Congress created but failed to fund last year, Kleis said.

A fiscal stimulus bill expected to pass early in 2009 will likely have numerous green incentives for public infrastructure, and the MAC’s project will qualify retroactively, he said.

Similar green renovations could be applied to other city-owned buildings, including a long-planned St. Cloud Civic Center expansion, Mathiasen said.

“There’s a whole world opening up to folks like us who run these big buildings,” he said.