A University Heated By Country’s Largest Geothermal System

How do you heat and cool 47 buildings and 25,000 people without using any fuel, and only minimal electricity?

By digging. Or more specifically: by installing an elaborate underground geothermal energy system that can both heat water during the winter, and cool it in the summer.

Geothermal electricity production may still be in its infancy in the U.S. But Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, is showing how geothermal technology can provide at large scale, and deliver big financial and carbon savings. Although the project, which spreads across 731 acres, will initially cost $70 to 75 million, it will cut the college’s bills by $2 million a year, and halve its CO2 output. The project is already 50 percent finished, with full completion expected in 2013. Assuming the cost of electricity remains the same, it will be paid off around 2050.

The closed loop system consists of 3,600 boreholes drilled 400 to 500 feet deep across the campus’s sports fields and parking lots; about 10 miles of piping making up hot and cold water “district” loops; two energy stations where heat is either transferred to the buildings, or sunk to the ground; and various building interfaces and controls. Geothermal heat pumps draw heat from the ground to warm water to 150 degrees, or extract heat to cool it to 40 degrees, depending on what is needed.

Jim Lowe, director of engineering, construction and operations at Ball State, says he was originally going to replace the university’s four decades-old coal-fired boilers with biomass-burning units. But he changed his mind after realizing that such units would be expensive to install and maintain, and that largescale geothermal was now possible. Several Indiana-based firms now specialize in the technology, adding to the allure for Ball State, which says it wants to provide jobs and investment for the local community.

Lowe estimates the geothermal system will cost about $15 million more than replacing the boilers would have done, but that the project will soon pay for itself. “Seven-and-a-half, 10 or even 15 years is a short time span for an institution that’s going to be here for hundreds of years, and for a system that’s going to have a life expectancy of over 50 years.”

The added bonus is that the by dispensing with a boiler-based system, Ball is future-proofing itself against potential federal regulations restricting use of coal-fired boilers. “It won’t matter for us because we won’t be using coal,” says Lowe.

The project is far from straightforward, though. Lowe says it is has been a “challenge” to find “corridors” for all the piping around campus, and there has been disruption to faculty and students, though he insists they are fully behind the scheme. Installing the pipes underground also means some limits on what can be built on the surface in the future.

Apart the cost and earth-works involved, Lowe says the biggest obstacle to more geothermal projects is mental. He says people need to accept a “paradigm shift” where they are no longer burning a fuel, like coal, to create steam, but instead creating distribution system for hot and cold water.

It is hard to know if the project will work exactly as expected, given its scale. But Lowe says he has received plenty of phone calls and visits from other universities, municipalities, and cities (Toronto, for instance) asking about how it works. The head of the U.S. General Services Administration Martha Johnson also visited Ball last year, later describing the project in glowing terms.

“We are showing that it can be done,” Lowe says.