Just more than a year into the project, Ball State University is still on schedule with the nation's largest geothermal heating and cooling systems.
Jim Lowe, director of engineering, construction and operations, said Tuesday that the team is four weeks away from finishing the final drilling on the thousands of boreholes, and the project is moving along on schedule.
"We are extending distribution piping, which is what is going on behind Carmichael [Hall], Kinghorn [Hall] and the new recreation center," he said. "We are taking the opportunity to install these with the sites already under construction and hopefully by next summer, the piping will be in place."
Ball State began construction on the $66 million geothermal project in May 2009 and it is scheduled to be completed in 10 years. During the project's first year, the geothermal construction has mostly occurred on the northern end of campus.
Lowe said he does realize that driving or walking through campus can be a challenge with all the construction. However, he said by next year some buildings on campus will change over to geothermal energy.
Magdelynn Pollaro, co-president of Students for a Sustainable Campus, said she thinks it's great that the community understands this project is going to change everything, which makes the inconvenience of campus construction worth the wait.
"We are going to change everything and make a difference," Pollaro said. "You have a large campus and community who wants to promote the good for the world and what is going to help the world. The campus is trying to provide that. It might take a while for the rest of the country and state to follow in our shoes, but we are doing it now."
The geothermal plan, when fully implemented, promises to cut Ball State's energy costs by an about $2 million annually while also reducing the university's overall carbon footprint by roughly half.
"In addition to the environmental and financial benefits, moving away from a dependency on coal shows that Ball State is willing to be a pioneer in this new environmental age," former President of the Ball State Energy Action Team, Linsi Latimer said.
Ball State Energy Action Team, a group of students from different fields that work to promote environmental awareness, hopes the university can honor the commitment to a sustainable campus and reduce the energy use on campus.
Students from around the Midwest came to Indiana University last weekend for the first Sierra Club Midwest Coal Conference. The conference, held to discuss the need to create sustainable campus and get rid of the dependency on coal-fired plants, has Latimer and other students excited that Ball State can lead other universities by example.
"There are many other sustainability initiatives BSU is taking: the Council on the Environment, Natural Resources and Environmental Management Department, Landscape Architecture, Urban Planning and many other organizations on campus are finding ways, small and large, to make campus more sustainable and act as an example to other universities," Latimer said.
Lowe said other universities like Rutgers University and Stanford University have contacted him, wanting to learn about the geothermal project and advice on how to implement sustainable energy projects. Lowe said when talking to the other universities he walks them through the same learning curve Ball State has recently walked through.
"It's a great feeling being part of he trend," he said. "We continue to spread the information we gathered and in the fall of 2011, it starts. We will begin to gather more information and provide that to the Department of Energy and it will be a great educational and research opportunity."
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