The State University of New York at Albany is beginning a $30 million decarbonization project that will enable it to shut down its gas-fired boilers during the summer months, it announced earlier this month. 

The project will install a high-efficiency electric centrifugal chiller and a heat recovery chiller, both connected to a new geothermal well field consisting of between 90 and 135 wells in a campus parking lot. The chillers will replace two gas-fired absorption chillers in the campus' 1960s-era central power plant, the university says. In addition, the project will modify domestic hot water systems in over 25 buildings and install new low-temperature hot water piping in the campus athletic facilities.

The geothermal heat recovery chiller will be able to meet all of the campus cooling, heating and domestic hot water loads during the summer months, the university says. The move is projected to reduce the university's annual fossil fuel consumption by 16%, according to Indu, the energy officer at the University at Albany. 

The pipes throughout the campus that deliver hot water can create technical problems when transitioning to geothermal or other non-combustion heating technologies because of their small diameter, Indu said. 

With those pipes, “You cannot make steam or high-temperature hot water without burning some sort of fossil fuel,” Indu said. 

This limitation is why the university will only be able to turn off its gas-fired boilers during the summer months. “As the heating load starts to increase, our pipe sizes are too small to heat the campus with just 180-degree [Fahrenheit] water,” she said.  

Next steps

To overcome the limitations of existing pipes, the university is evaluating the construction of a satellite energy hub: a fully electrified geothermal heat recovery plant on the other side of campus, closer to where major loads like residential buildings and the University at Albany’s proposed $250 million health innovation & technology building will be located, according to Indu. 

The satellite energy hub and associated geothermal wells would help heat and cool 700,000 square feet of adjacent buildings in addition to the health tech building, the university says. Then, the university will build new pipe networks and electrify the existing plant using the existing piping infrastructure to “feed as much of the campus as we can while that other plant starts to pick up some slack from buildings on the other end,” Indu said. 

“Eventually, these two networks will connect and provide redundancy for each other. But that [plan] will help us move to that without spending an enormous amount of money on pipes,” Indu said. The new plant and geothermal wells are expected to reduce the campus’ fossil fuel consumption by an additional 16%, according to the university’s release. 

The current project and expected next steps are part of the SUNY system’s push to decarbonize across the state as New York works to achieve an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the university said. 

Seeing the whole picture

Life cycle planning and master planning are critical to implementing energy efficiency projects and preventing hiccups in the process, according to Indu. 

“Campuses, especially … are complex systems,” Indu said. “You can’t just look at one component and see what's the best for this building or this specific system. You have to look at campus as a whole. If I make this change here, how does this impact other things on campus?”

To that end, UAlbany has developed a Clean Energy Master Plan to decarbonize its downtown campus, which it is currently seeking state funding to support. 

“Capital cost is usually the thing that stops people from implementing these projects. Because replacing chillers [like for like] is probably going to be way cheaper [up front], almost half the cost of doing this heat recovery channel, the well fields and all of that,” Indu said. 

However, while a well field is expensive, it has a life cycle of 50 to 60 years, compared with a cooling tower that may only have a life of 20 to 25 years, Indu said. “You can just use your annual savings. You have to look at the life cycle cost of the system and compare it, and then look at the net present value over the life of the system,” she said.