Association Need Help? 850-547-0102 - Ronnie 25 NOVEMBER 2023 WorldWide Drilling Resource® University Going Geothermal Adapted from Information by the University of Michigan Construction is underway on the first major geoexchange facility at the University of Michigan’s North Campus. The system will heat and cool the Leinweber Computer Science and Information (CSI) Building, which will be the new home for the School of Information and will provide expansion space for the Computer Science and Engineering Division of Michigan Engineering. Due to the geoexchange system, the Leinweber CSI Building will be all electric, and the first large-scale university building to not rely on natural gas for heating. It will be heated entirely by the geoexchange system, and partially cooled by it. Other cooling will come from the North Campus Chiller Plant, which is an all-electric facility producing chilled water to cool many of the buildings in the academic core on North Campus. A phased campus-wide transition to geothermal heating and cooling systems is planned, beginning with this system. The Hayward Street Geothermal Facility, a 4000-square-foot heating and cooling auxiliary building located near the borings, represents an important step as the university makes continued progress toward university-wide carbon neutrality goals. Workers drilled to depths in the range of 700 feet to install piping for the closed-loop geoexchange system. Approximately 100 boreholes, spaced between 19 and 20 feet apart, were placed across an area about two-thirds the size of a football field. Once operational, the system will use the earth’s constant subsurface temperature as a low-grade energy source, acting as a heat sink in the summer and as a low-grade heat source in the winter, thus maximizing energy efficiency. The Leinweber Building is planned to be ready for occupancy in 2025. The Geothermal Facility is on schedule to support startup of the building’s cooling system in the summer of 2024 and its heating system in the fall of 2024. The new geothermal facility will serve as an initial project as the university continues to evaluate additional geoexchange heating and cooling opportunities on campus. Pic by Marcin Szczepanski, MI Eng. GEO
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