Dane County nursing home to hold show off solar energy at open house on Saturday

Thursday, February 17, 2011

From an article by in the Bill Novak in The Capital Times:

The new $22.6 million Badger Prairie Health Care Center is almost ready to open, and Dane County wants to show it off to the public before residents start moving in.

A community open house is set for 2-4 p.m. Saturday, giving Dane County residents a chance to tour the state-of-the-art facility, which will be home to up to 120 residents.

Badger Prairie is located on the east side of Verona, near the intersection of Business 18/151 and Maple Grove Road.

"Our brand new county nursing home offers our most vulnerable citizens the comforts of home and quality care in a warm atmosphere," said County Executive Kathleen Falk.

The facility features private bedrooms with private baths, all grouped into "households" of 8-11 residents, each household having a kitchen, living room, dining area and sunroom, with outdoor patio and flower garden.

Badger Prairie Health Care Center is the first nursing home in Wisconsin to incorporate major energy-saving features like geothermal energy for heating and cooling and solar-powered systems for hot water.

Badger Prairie is the oldest, continually operating health care facility in Dane County and likely the entire state of Wisconsin.

Colleges, including the UW-Madison, take advantage of geothermal heating, cooling

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

From an Associated Press article by Dinesh Ramde published in the Appleton Post-Crescent:

MILWAUKEE — While solar and wind power get most of the headlines, geothermal power is quietly gaining traction on college campuses where energy costs can siphon millions each year from the budget.

Schools from Wisconsin to New Mexico have geothermal projects in the works. There are 46 schools divvying up millions in federal stimulus dollars to advance technology that uses the temperature of the earth, rather than coal-fired power plants, to heat and cool buildings.

So far this year, the Department of Energy has announced $400 million in grants to advance geothermal projects like those under way on a handful of campuses.
Geothermal technology has been around for decades, it works and it is increasingly affordable. At colleges that must maintain dozens of large buildings, the savings are magnified.

Those involved in the decision to pursue geothermal technology say they wanted to use less coal-fired power, although the schools also had to save money to justify the move.

The technology is a natural fit for schools like Boise State that sit atop geothermal springs. The school recently announced it expects to save as much as $80,000 per year in heating costs by doing so, and even more as the project expands. Yet schools in the Midwest and East are also turning to geothermal power using a different type of technology.

A typical geothermal system works like this:
On a warm day, the system draws heat from a hot building and pumps it underground where the soil absorbs it. On a cold day the process reverses — the system extracts heat from the earth and returns it to the building.

The process is so efficient that even though the underground temperature remains about a constant 55 degrees, the system can be used to chill water to 45 degrees or heat it to 170 degrees.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison, which spends about $50 million in climate-control costs per year, is incorporating a geothermal system in a building that opens next fall. The school should recover the $1.25 million cost in 15 to 20 years, said George Austin, the building project manager.

"If energy costs rise at a rapid rate, the payback (time) may be less than that," he said.

Drilling begins on UW-Madison geothermal system

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

From a story by Janet Kelly on the UW-Madison news site:

Deep drilling begins this week to place 75 bore holes approximately 300 feet below the site of the future Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, marking another first for the interdisciplinary research building project.

It is the first research facility on campus to be constructed with a geothermal heating and cooling system. Once the facility opens in fall 2010, the unseen holes sunk deep below the earth's surface will provide an annual 10 percent savings on energy use.

Solar tops new Madison Olson Elementary School

Friday, August 29, 2008

From an article by Tamira Madsen in The Capital Times:

The 88,000-square foot, $13 million school was completed earlier this week and has a geothermal heating/cooling system, day lighting windows and solar panel roofing. Olson is one of the first schools in the state to be constructed to strict environmental guidelines, also known as LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) specifications. The school was named for Paul J. Olson, a native of Mount Horeb and University of Wisconsin graduate who was a devoted conservationist and highly respected science teacher and 23-year principal at Midvale Elementary School.

It's those green aspects that many Olson parents and teachers find appealing, including Kimi Ishikawa, an English as a second language teacher in a fourth- and fifth-grade classroom.

Ishikawa taught at Chavez for five years and helped build a rain garden at the school. She said encouraging children to respect and take care of the environment is important for the faculty, which organized a green team over the summer. Several initiatives the team plans to incorporate are carpooling and developing a prairie.

"Environmental issues are really important to me," Ishikawa said. "I think it will be very exciting starting a new culture at a new school and building a new community, and hopefully, building it around some of those environmental mind-sets. I was involved in putting in a rain garden at Chavez and a bunch of us at Chavez took a prairie restoration class.

Energy from the earth: Interest in geothermal heating, cooling systems is growing

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

From an article by Michael Burke in The Journal Times (Racine):

The earth heats and cools John Schroeder’s home in Madison — and he’s not sitting on a volcano or a glacier.

Schroeder is one of a growing number of people who are turning to geothermal systems to slash their utility bills and reduce their impact on the planet.

That interest promises to usher in a new industry and new kinds of jobs as more people look for ways to limit their fossil fuel addictions.

Bill Furbish, a water systems specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, says interest in geothermal systems is growing, and for good reason.

"Geothermal is definitely taking off,” said the specialist with the Bureau of Drinking Water and Ground Water. “It has very strong advantages to conventional heating and cooling. It offers great energy efficiencies.”

A geothermal system operates on the same principle that runs a refrigerator, using heat naturally stored in soil or water to heat and cool homes, businesses and factories.

For an average new house, choosing geothermal over a conventional, 90 percent-efficient furnace and central air-conditioning would raise the cost by $5,000 to $6,000, said Tom Niesen, Gateway Technical College’s lead instructor for Gateway’s lead instructor for heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration.

The payback in lower utility bills would be about five years.

Geothermal workshops in May

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

A workshop announcement from the Energy Center of Wisconsin:

This training is designed to give you information that will help you assess whether a geoexchange system is right for your next project, be it a home, school or business. Discover the right way to plan and evaluate your next successful geoexchange project!

We are facing a number of energy challenges in the next decade. The comfort system in our buildings is one of the most important choices we will make regarding a building’s performance. Facing rising energy prices, residential and commercial customers are seeking ways to manage their energy use and costs. The growing importance architects and builders are placing on environmental sustainability without sacrificing economic considerations makes geoexchange systems (geothermal heat pump technology) an efficient and cost effective solution.

Dates & locations
Tuesday, May 6, 2008 – Hudson, WI
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 – Madison, WI
Thursday, May 8, 2008 – Green Bay, WI

Second Sun Prairie school to use geothermal system

Monday, January 21, 2008

From a story by Gena Kittner in the Wisconsin State Journal:

The Sun Prairie School District is set once again to tap into the Earth's natural body temperature to warm and cool its newest elementary school.

Creekside Elementary, located on the city's south side, will be the second of three Sun Prairie schools the district plans to heat and cool using a geothermal system.

Geothermal technology has seen "an explosion of growth in the last seven years or so in Wisconsin," said Manus McDevitt, principal with Sustainable Engineering Group in Madison. "It's coming to a point now where electricity and gas prices are so high ... that really the argument for geothermal becomes stronger and stronger. For school districts it makes a lot of sense."

The systems can cut schools' energy use by 10 percent to 40 percent, McDevitt said.

The Madison, Verona and Monona Grove school districts also have or plan to incorporate geothermal technology into school construction. Evansville and Fond du Lac high schools have used the technology for several years.