Tax credit aims to make Iowa fertile ground for geothermal

Posted on 07/11/2012 by Dan Haugen

Geothermal bore drilling at a rural home. (Photo by jeffreyw via Creative Commons)

Iowa is a national leader in wind energy, with the second most installed capacity after Texas.

A bill signed into law this spring aims to help diversify the state’s renewable sources beyond wind, offering among other things a first-ever state tax credit for geothermal projects.

Geothermal installers say the incentive is already helping to sway motivated customers who have done their homework but hesitated to make the investment until now.

“Everyone’s been darn busy putting geothermal in,” said Ron Marr, executive director of the Iowa Geothermal Association, which represents about 150 installers.

Geothermal systems tap into the near-constant temperatures found deep enough below the surface all year round, usually between 50 and 60 degree Fahrenheit. In the winter, water or fluid is pumped through a system of underground pipes, carrying heat up to the surface. In the summer, the system reverses, depositing heat below ground. →

Are we flushing a heat source down the drain?

Posted on 04/23/2012 by Dan Haugen

(Photo by Evan Long via Creative Commons)

A northern Minnesota start-up company wants to recover a waste heat source that’s currently flushed down the drain.

Hidden Fuels of Brainerd, Minnesota, is trying to develop a municipal sewer heat recovery system, which would heat buildings using warmth from the city’s sewers — minus the stench.

Jeff Aga, one of the company’s principals, said it would work similar to geothermal, but that sewers have an advantage of warmer starting temperatures than ground wells.

“We did some tests throughout their system and found where there’s good heat that can be captured,” Aga said.

The company placed temperature sensors throughout the city’s sewer system as part of a 16-month, federal stimulus-funded feasibility study that was completed in January. They found temperatures ranged from 38 to 78 degrees, but were mostly between 45 and 60 degrees. The warmest temperatures were found near a commercial laundry facility.

Aga said they’ve identified the police department as a good potential customer for the system, which might also be able to heat the local high school and a nearby apartment high rise.

“The fact that no one else has really thought about tapping into that until we did this study, I thought, was kind of fascinating,” says Scott Sjolund, technology supervisor at Brainerd Public Utilities, which sponsored the study after the city was approached by Hidden Fuels.

The company believes the system would be the first of its kind in the United States, though Vancouver built something like it as part of its 2010 Olympics village. The New York Times reported that the Vancouver project was the first district energy system in North America to draw heat from untreated wastewater, and that three others existed in Oslo and Tokyo.

The fact that so few systems exist is probably a sign of their challenging economics, said John Whitehouse, vice president of business development for Recycled Energy Development, an Illinois company that designs, builds, owns and operates cogeneration and waste heat recovery projects around the country.

“Unless you have really high energy prices, it’s going to be a hard sell,” Whitehouse said of the concept in general.

Low natural gas prices mean the payback time is likely to be long, he said. That’s especially true for projects that will involve retrofitting buildings rather than incorporating systems into new construction.

And while there is heat in sewers that’s technically recoverable, “there’s just not that much there,” Whitehouse said. His company normally looks for opportunities where the temperature is at least 180 degrees.

Hidden Fuels has presented the results of its feasibility study at public meetings in Brainerd. Next, it hopes to find funding to build a system at the police station.

Biomass, geothermal replacing coal on campuses

Posted on 04/13/2012 by Dan Haugen

Michigan State University students hold up petitions calling for clean energy and not coal on campus at a rally on Wednesday. (Photo by Kim Teplitzky / Sierra Club)

April 13, 2012

By Dan Haugen

The Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla was founded in 1870 as a school of mining and metallurgy, supporting the Ozark region’s lead and zinc industries.

Next week, school officials will celebrate the start of a new chapter, one that involves extracting heat from the ground rather than minerals.

Missouri S&T will break ground Tuesday on a $32 million geothermal energy facility — a system of wells and pipes that will provide heat to 15 buildings, as well as chilling for the campus’ water system.

The project, which will replace an aging coal-fired steam plant, is expected to cut the school’s energy consumption in half and reduce carbon emissions by 25,000 tons a year.

It’s one of twenty victories the Sierra Club is counting as part of its Campuses Beyond Coal campaign, in which student groups have put pressure on administrators to shutdown coal-burning power plants (the Sierra Club is a member of RE-AMP, which also publishes Midwest Energy News).

A dozen Midwest universities have recently committed to phase out coal-burning power plants on their campuses. They include schools in Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

Support for transition

At Missouri S&T, it wasn’t much of a fight.

Graduate student Eric Farrow led a brief campaign in late 2010 that involved tabling and a petition drive. But by then, administrators had already announced plans to replace the coal-fired power plant with a geothermal facility. All that remained was for the school’s governing board to approve bonding money, which it did in November 2010.

“It was more of a showing of student support for the administration’s decision,” says Farrow.

Ted Ruth, the school’s director of design construction management, says several factors were behind the decision to mothball the coal- and wood-burning campus steam plant. For starters, it’s old, inefficient and in need of about $26 million in deferred maintenance.

Meanwhile, new environmental regulations are making it more expensive and complicated to keep operating coal plants.

“We’re trying to stay ahead of that curve,” says Ruth.

Sustainability concerns played a role, too. In addition to energy savings, the school expects to conserve about 8 million gallons of water per year using geothermal instead of steam heat.

Missouri S&T’s campus was built around the coal plant, which sits right in the center of it. Crews will remove the coal yard, elevator chute, and other pieces of the plant, but no decision has been made yet on how to repurpose the building, says Ruth.

“No coal plant I know is aesthetically appealing,” he says.

The geothermal project is expected to be completed in 2014. The school also plans to increase its reliance on natural gas in order to fully replace the energy it currently gets from the steam plant.

A mix of solutions

That type of hybrid approach is a pretty common one for schools that are working to phase out coal on campus, says Kim Teplitzky, a national press secretary for the Sierra Club campaign.

When the campaign began in September 2009, the organization identified 60 schools with coal-burning power plants on campus. It’s worked to organize or support student groups at each of those schools to encourage administrators to shut down the plants.

“Really the pitch is about leadership, it’s about preparing students for [clean energy] jobs, and about saving money in the long run by investing in clean energy solutions,” says Teplitzky.

So far, about a third of the schools on its target list have committed to phase out coal. Some have done so simply by switching to natural gas. Others have pursued major renewable projects.

Eastern Illinois University celebrated the opening of one of the country’s largest biomass facilities last fall. The Renewable Energy Center includes two biomass gasifiers and are expected to reduce the school’s annual carbon emissions by about 20,000 metric tons.

Other Midwest universities that have pledged to stop burning coal on campus include Case Western Reserve, Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Miami (in Oxford, Ohio), Minnesota (Crookston and Twin Cities), Oberlin College, Ohio, Southeast Missouri State, Western Illinois, and Wisconsin (Madison).

Other schools that haven’t signed the pledge are also moving forward with renewable energy projects, including Ball State and the University of Toledo.

Many of the early pledgers were, like Missouri S&T, already predisposed to moving off of coal. “The ones that are left are going to be the tougher campaigns,” says Teplitzky, citing Southern Illinois, Carbondale, in the heart of coal country, as an example.

Michigan State vote today

A two-story-tall inflatable inhaler went up this week at Michigan State University, where students demonstrated Wednesday against an Energy Transition Plan they say is inadequate.

MSU Beyond Coal says the document, which calls for an eventual transition to 100 percent renewable energy, lacks concrete benchmarks and ignores the urgency of retiring the campus coal plant.

“We feel that there is a lot more potential to be more aggressive and use resources that are here now,” says sophomore Mollie VanOrsdol, one of the group’s organizers.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben spoke at the school this week to support the student group’s cause.

Michigan State’s board of trustees is expected to vote on the energy plan at its monthly meeting today.

Update: Michigan State’s board of trustees Friday morning unanimously approved the school’s Energy Transition Plan, which calls for the university to use 40 percent renewable power by 2040.

The MSU Beyond Coal student group issued a statement after the vote:

“We’re really disappointed that the board chose to move this so-called plan forward even though it lacks innovation, real clean energy goals or a plan for retiring the dirty coal plant on campus,” said student Talya Tavor. “This could have been an opportunity for MSU to be a national clean energy leader, but instead the transition plan simply puts off any real investments or dedication to clean energy to an unknown future date with no accountability.”

Dan Haugen is an Energy Journalism Fellow at Midwest Energy News. Contact him at dan@danhaugen.com.

Michigan towns dig deep to reduce energy costs

Posted on 08/15/2011 by Jeff Kart

Workers drill a geothermal bore hole some 500 feet deep in Wyandotte, Michigan. (Photo courtesy Wyandotte Municipal Services)

Despite being in one of the worst regions in the country for geothermal power, two Michigan cities are nevertheless finding ways to save on energy costs by tapping the earth’s natural heat.

In the Detroit suburbs of Wyandotte and Dearborn Heights, local officials are using federal grants and city funds to help reduce the upfront cost for residents to convert to geothermal heating and cooling. Geothermal systems can cost several times more to install than traditional central air conditioning or natural gas furnaces, but the additional costs are paid back through utility savings in 5-10 years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Geothermal energy works by digging wells to a spot in the earth where there’s a relatively constant core temperature of about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Water or an antifreeze solution is circulated to the spot through a closed loop of plastic pipes. During the winter, the fluid collects heat from the earth and carries it through the system and into the building. During the summer, the system is reversed, and the building is cooled by pulling heat back into the ground.

The systems work by using ground-source heat pumps, which take the place of a furnace or air-conditioning unit and use less electricity.

A shared resource

In Dearborn Heights, Ron Amen is spearheading a project to convert the city’s 33,000-square-foot senior center to geothermal heating and cooling. In a large grassy area next to the center, crews would drill wells to service the building and up to 400 neighborhood homes, said Amen, the city’s director of community and economic development.

“The building is 57 years old, and the boiler is 57 years old,” he said of the senior center. “Our superintendent of building maintenance tells me he’ll be surprised if it gets through another heating season.”

The senior center doesn’t have central air, either, and relies on a half-dozen old, inefficient window units in various rooms.

The nearby homes are 1,200-1,500 square feet, and almost all of them are bungalows or small ranches. “These people would see probably anywhere from a 50-75 percent reduction in heating costs with natural gas, and cooling costs,” he said.

Amen is working with Advanced Energy Group of Ann Arbor on the project. He’s currently seeking financing for a portion of the $700,000 cost, and plans to seek final approval later this year from the City Council. The project would also include new windows and improved insulation.

“Between the savings that we would realize in our heating and cooling costs, and what money I would be able to come up with in the next few years from community block grants, I’m hoping to get it paid off in eight years,” Amen said.

The big expense for a homeowner who wants to convert to geothermal are bores that have to be drilled, Amen said. “Here in this area, you have to go down about 500 feet to get a temperature of about 51 degrees.”

Residents in Dearborn Heights wouldn’t have to put in money upfront. They can receive a $5,000-$6,000 federal grant for switching their homes from natural gas to geothermal, Amen said. They would sign those grant checks over to the city, and make monthly payments for the new systems. The payments would be equal to what they’re currently paying for heating and cooling, with the savings from the geothermal system going to pay off the cost of the installed equipment. Paying off each system would take 4-5 years.

Amen said he has been shopping around the senior center plan to homeowners in Dearborn Heights, and has received an enthusiastic response so far.

A geothermal utility

The city of Wyandotte has gone a step further, and established a geothermal utility with existing funds, said Melanie McCoy, general manager at Wyandotte Municipal Services, which provides power within city limits using a boiler that burns coal and shredded tires.

McCoy sees geothermal heating and cooling as another product that the city utility can provide for residents. “All we’re trying to do is remove a barrier” to installation, McCoy said.

According to McCoy, an average geothermal installation can cost $20,000, with $12,000 for the heat pump and $8,000 for the well.

Wyandotte is rolling out its new product gradually, and has established a rate system for homeowners. People can contract to have a system installed by the city, or have the city maintain a system installed by a third party, with various payment plans supported by a 30 percent federal tax credit and city utility rebates. A $26 monthly fee can replace the cost of drilling the well. About a dozen homes are expected to be converted this year.

McCoy says residents who make the switch will save money in the long run compared to conventional heating and cooling systems, and the city utility will benefit from reduced electricity demand in the summer.

In a separate project, Wyandotte is using a $7.8 million federal neighborhood stabilization grant to construct 25 new homes and rehabilitate 19 existing structures, about half of which are already under contract or in the works.

A quarter of those homes will be sold to low-income families for about $120,000, and fitted with geothermal heating and cooling systems, said Mark Kowalewski, Wyandotte city engineer.

“The reason I did geothermal is, I really can’t do anything with the mortgage payment or the interest or the taxes,” Kowalewski said. “But I can make it more cost-effective for the low-income person by making the utilities as low as possible.”

The geothermal bill for the homes will be about $28 a month, to cover maintenance. Residents will pay electrical costs for a geothermal pump that replaces a natural gas furnace, but can expect to save $1,500 to $1,700 a year in heating and cooling costs, he said. The goal is to finish all 44 homes by February 2013.

McCoy, from the Wyandotte utility, says a long-term plan is to create a direct-use system in her city — an infrastructure of wells and pipes that could provide geothermal heat to city homes. “We’re a pretty compact city,” she said, with about 26,000 residents in a 5-square-mile area.

‘In the future, you’re not going to have a choice’

Despite these efforts, Michigan isn’t necessarily a hot spot for geothermal energy. Limestone in Wyandotte and clay in Dearborn Heights make drilling more expensive than in other areas. The situation is similar throughout the Midwest.

“In general, the potential in the Midwest is really small,” said Rob Podgorney, a senior scientists at Idaho National Laboratory, which conducts geothermal and other energy research.

The western U.S. has a higher potential overall for geothermal energy, including heating, cooling and electricity generation, Podgorney said.

“If you go deep enough, you will find hot enough water or hot enough rocks” for a geothermal heating and cooling system, he explained. “In the Midwest, you have to go a whole lot deeper.”

Podgorney said Wyandotte’s geothermal utility appears to be the first of its kind in the Midwest. A handful of western states already have similar programs in place.

Amen, from Dearborn Heights, believes it’s only a matter of time before geothermal takes over as a dominant source of heating and cooling in the U.S. Besides being more efficient, geothermal doesn’t emit greenhouse gases associated with natural gas.

“In the future, you’re not going to have a choice,” he said. “You’re going to have to go with geothermal, that’s just the way it’s going to be with the rise in prices of natural gas. These fuels are finite. They’re not going to be around forever.”

Jeff Kart is principal at Enviroprose, an online communications consulting business based in Bay City, Michigan, that specializes in environmental media. He spent 14 years at The Bay City Times, the last several as an environmental reporter.

This work by Midwest Energy News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Two birds with one stone

Posted on 06/06/2011 by Ken Paulman

Science rarely works the way it does in the movies – with a flash of inspiration followed by a musical montage of furious scrawling in notebooks and laboratory hijinks:

But a pair of University of Minnesota researchers recently had one of those screen-worthy epiphanies that could lead to more widespread use of geothermal power.

The scientists, Martin Saar and Jimmy Randolph, were working separately on geothermal energy and CO2 sequestration. While traveling to northern Minnesota together to do field work, the scientists started swapping ideas.

“We connected the dots and said, ‘Wait a minute – what are the consequences if you use geothermally heated CO2?’” Saar said in a news release. “We had a hunch in the car that there should be lots of advantages to doing that.”

The idea, basically, is to use compressed CO2 instead of water to capture geothermal heat from deep in the ground. The key advantage is that CO2 moves more easily through rock, making it more efficient than water, which could make geothermal energy viable in places it wouldn’t otherwise make economic sense. In addition, it’s a means of sequestering CO2 in the ground, and could also be combined with secondary oil and natural gas recovery operations.

“It’s combining proven technology in a new way,” Saar said in the news release. “It’s one of thos things where you know how the individual components work. The question is, how will they perform together in this new way? The simulation results suggest it’s going to be very favorable.”

Saar and Randolph developed the technology with the help of $600,000 in renewable energy innovation funds from the University’s Institute on the Environment, and published their findings in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters. They’ve applied for a patent and plan to start a company to market the technique.

Tag Archives: geothermal

Tax credit aims to make Iowa fertile ground for geothermal

Are we flushing a heat source down the drain?