Exploring GHP Opportunities
Introduction
On a regular basis, usually once every one or two years, each of Virginia's 134 public school divisions develops a Capital Improvement Program (CIP), which indicates the capital projects that the division intends to pursue, and the expected timing and approximate cost of each project over a five- or six-year planning period. The types of projects that represent opportunities for potential installation of a geothermal heat pump system include HVAC system retrofits (usually to replace aging chillers and/or boilers), building renovations and/or additions, and new school construction. In order for any of these opportunities to be developed into an actual installed GHP system, it is essential that the geothermal alternative be included as one of the study requirements in the scope of work for the design of that project. This means that GHP opportunities must be promoted within the established framework of a school division's capital planning process.
This page offers guidance on how to form an on-line collaborative team to identify suitable GHP opportunities in your school division's CIP and then determine which ones are most promising. The next page offers guidance on how to expand your support base by enlisting outside help from community professionals and federal government resources. With this expanded support, your team can better inform other CIP stakeholders about GHP technology in general and the most promising GHP project opportunities in particular, and help develop supporting documentation that decision-makers can use in preparing GHP-friendly bid packages that issue from the CIP.
The first phase in this process is to identify other stakeholders in your school division who might be interested in geothermal heat pump technology and determine their interest in teaming with you to discover and promote the most promising GHP opportunities.
Phase I: Assess Stakeholder Interest and Form Team
In order to form an effective team of collaborators, it is important to know which groups are involved in developing, reviewing, modifying, and approving the CIP at various points in the school capital planning process. Figure 1 gives an example of how this process works in the City of Alexandria (from Alexandria City Public Schools budgets page; details available there). Note that in this school division, CIP development occurs over a 15-month period in three distinct stages:
- A 4- to 5-month stage when the school division interacts primarily with the principals, teachers, and support personnel at individual schools
- A 6-month stage (outlined in red) between the time that the school division begins to develop a scope of work and budget estimate for each individual capital project and the time that the CIP is approved by the School Board
- A 4-month stage when City Council reviews (and can modify) the School Board's approved CIP and incorporates it into the City's total Capital Improvement Program.
After the Alexandria School Board approves the CIP, it is forwarded to the City Manager and Council for review and incorporation into the total City Capital Improvement Program. At this stage, City Council can change the dollar amounts allocated for particular projects, but generally they do not alter the scope of work specified by the School Board and Superintendent. The City Council has until May to review, discuss, and approve the capital budget, including appropriate financing for approved projects.
All school divisions go through a similar capital planning process, particularly in the middle stage, which centers on Division staff planning and School Board deliberations (outlined by red box in above figure). For example, while Alexandria City's middle stage is a six-month process from July to January, Fairfax County's middle stage is a four-month process, beginning its Facilities Service Analysis in September, with the final CIP adopted by the School Board and submitted to the County Department of Planning and Zoning in January.
Because this middle stage is more uniform across Virginia, and because it centers on decision-making at the Division/Board level, which can accomodate more diverse stakeholder inputs than the first stage (individual school decision-making) or last stage (local government decision-making), this is the stage when collaborative teams can have the greatest influence in ensuring that the GHP alternative is meaningfully included in school capital planning.
Identify and Contact Stakeholders
The team members likely to be most effective in promoting GHP technology in your school division will come from stakeholder groups who already participate in the school capital planning process. The flow chart below illustrates at what stage these various groups are involved in the development of a school division's CIP. Immediately below this figure is a listing of where you can find these stakeholder groups on the Internet.
Here is a list of the ten different stakeholder groups involved in the above CIP development process, as shown above, with links to the Web sites that represent them in Virginia, where contact information can be found for members in your school division:
- Licensed architects participate in the facility needs survey and also in bidding for the design of individual CIP projects. Web sites where you can find contact information for potential collaborators from this stakeholder group include the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Virginia Society and the following AIA regional chapters: Northern Virginia, James River, and Hampton Roads. Enthusiastic collaborators might also be found among students at Virginia's accredited Colleges of Architecture, with links to student chapters available at the American Institute of Architecture Students.
- Architecture firms that specialize in school design, and mechanical and energy engineers who focus on educational facilities, can be located through the Virginia chapter of the Council of Educational Facility Planners.
- The Virginia Department of Education has posted staff telephone listings for all 134 school divisions, and these include key CIP participants such as the Associate Superintendent or Director of Educational Facilities. Financial decision-makers such as a division's Budget Coordinator may also belolong to the Virginia Association of School Business Officials.
- Section 22.1-140 of the Code of Virginia requires that "No public school building or addition or alteration thereto, for either permanent or temporary use, shall be advertised for bid, contracted for, erected, or otherwise acquired until the plans and specifications therefor have been approved in writing by the division superintendent..." These key decision-makers are represented by the Virginia Association of School Superintendents.
- School boards are the legal owners of public school capital facilities in Virginia and have a large hand in formulating and prioritizing a division’s CIP. Section 22.1-79 of the Code of Virginia empowers school boards to "care for, manage and control the property of the school division and provide for the erecting, furnishing, equipping, and noninstructional operating of necessary school buildings and apprurtenances and the maintenance thereof by purchase, lease, or other contracts." This is probably the single most important stakeholder group from which to draw at least one collaborator for your core team of GHP enthusiasts. School board members are represented by the Virginia School Board Association.
- Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) and Parent-Teacher-Student-Associations (PTSAs) can be involved in the earliest stage of CIP development and/or comment at public hearings about the CIP and are often quite active in the planning of any new school. Contact information is available at Virginia's PTA and PTSA Web site.
- An important subset of the above group are science teachers, particularly of the physical and earth sciences, who can use our Web site materials in classroom instruction and make student assignments to gather information in support of exploring different GHP options. Therefore, science teachers and their students can be real assets on any collaborative team that wants to intelligently promote GHP technology in Virginia's schools, and can be identified through the Virginia Association of Science Teachers.
- School principals are active participants in the early formulation stage of a capital improvement program and in new school planning. There are separate Virginia Web sites for elementary school principals and secondary school principals.
- City Managers, County Administrators, and local planning departments will review the CIP after it has been approved by a school board, and will make recommendations to the Mayor and City Council or to the County Executive and Board of Supervisors for its incorporation into the total CIP for a local government jurisdiction. This group is represented by the Virginia Local Government Management Association.
- Mayors and City Councils or County Executives and their Boards of Supervisors have final approval authority in the school capital planning process. For Virginia's incorporated cities, this group is represented by the Virginia Municipal League, while County Executives and Supervisors are represented by the Virginia Association of Counties.
The above list provides a pool of perhaps 50 to 100 stakeholders in each school division who regularly participate in the capital planning process. This is the resource from which one or more GHP champions can emerge and draw additional support to form an on-line collaborative team. Identifying this core team is the next step in implementing GHP technology in your school division.
Form Core Collaborative Team
GHP champions can use our electronic bulletin board to identify themselves to one another for mutual support and on-line collaboration to move forward with ideas that can lead to actual GHP projects in your school division. Here are guidelines for bootstrapping this process:
- First browse our discussion forum, and see if a topic folder for your school division already exists under the
category, which is at the bottom of the main topics page (link will open the Geo4VA Discussion Forum in a new browser window, which can be minimized or closed to get back to this page). You don't need to register for the forum or commit yourself in any way at this point; simply look for a topic folder with your school division name.
- If you see a folder for your school division, the next step is to decide if you want to actively participate in your team's discussions. You may want to simply read their discussions first, to see who is involved and the various discussion threads they are pursuing. To join the team, you must register for the forum,and check the box for your school division, which will appear under the list of Groups in the registration form. This will automatically notify the moderator for your division's team that you want to join, and s/he will send you a message confirming your status and welcoming you aboard.
- If you don't see a folder for your school division, then check
on the registration form, AND send an e-mail to the Board Administrator, indicating the name of your school division and whether you are interested in moderating the on-line discussions for your new team. As soon as your registration is processed, the Board Administrator will create a topic folder for your school division, which will appear under the category at the bottom of the main topics page. If you want to be the team moderator, the Administrator will set you up with moderating privileges; otherwise your team's discussions will remain unmoderated until such time as someone volunteers to moderate.
Even as a "team of one" you can begin to identify and evaluate different GHP opportunities that might evolve into actual projects within your school division's capital planning process. All you need to start is a topic folder for your school division.
Phase II: Evaluate GHP Project Opportunities
Identify GHP Opportunities in CIP
The first step in identifying potential GHP system opportunities is to obtain a copy of your school division's Capital Improvement Program (CIP). Because school capital planning is such a public process, the CIP is often posted on a Web site, and the easiest way to find it is to do a Web search (using Google, for example) for the following combination of terms:
- "Virginia"
- "[your city or county name]"
- "school"
- "Capital Improvement Program"
If you cannot find the most recent CIP in a Web search, then contact your local school division office to obtain a copy. For the appropriate person and phone number to contact, look up your city or county on the Virginia Department of Education's listing of Public School Divisions.
Once you obtain a copy of the CIP, read through the descriptions of the various projects. Generally speaking, projects budgeted for completion in the next one or two years are likely to be so far along in the design process that consideration of a GHP alternative might not be possible. The best opportunities will be HVAC replacement or school rennovation projects, budgeted for completion 3 to 5 years from now. GHP opportunities for new schools also must be identified early in the design phase, ideally before the architect has finalized square-footage assignments to various building spaces such as mechanical equipment rooms.
After you have identified various GHP opportunities in school renovation or HVAC retrofit projects, it will be helpful to rank them in terms of GHP compatibility with the existing heating and cooling system. In many cases, the plan will be to replace an aging heating systems and provide cooling to the building for the first time. Therefore, GHP compatibility with the existing heating system will be a key factor in ranking GHP opportunities.
The following table shows the compatability scores of various conventional space heating systems for retrofit with a GHP system. These scores indicate mechanical compatibility in terms of re-use of existing components (such as piping loops in the building), with a value of 10 indicating most compatable, and 1 indicating least compatable. These are average scores; site-specific conditions can influence compatability in either positive or negative ways.
| GHP Retrofit Compatability | ||
|---|---|---|
| Single Air Handler | Multiple Air Handler | |
| AIR DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS | ||
| Low-temperature hot water source (<150°F) | ||
| • Single zone, multi-zone, dual duct | 10 | 8 |
| • Terminal reheat, variable volume, induction | 8 | 6 |
| Standard hot water source (180-200°F) | ||
| • Single zone, multi-zone, dual duct | 8 | 7 |
| • Terminal reheat, variable volume, induction | 7 | 6 |
| Steam heat source (>212°F) | ||
| • Single zone, multi-zone, dual duct | 6 | 6 |
| • Terminal reheat, variable volume, induction | 5 | 4 |
| Electric resistance, forced air | 6 | 5 |
| Air-to-air, split system heat pump | 4 | 3 |
| Rooftop packaged equipment | 4 | 3 |
| Fossil-fuel fired, central furnace | 5 | 4 |
| Fossil-fuel fired, distributed unit heaters | 4 | 3 |
| WATER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS | ||
| Loop water-to-air heat pump | -- | 10 |
| Hydronic heating, radiant panel | -- | 10 |
| Fan-coil or unit ventilator system | ||
| • 2-pipe | -- | 9 |
| • 4-pipe, single coil | -- | 9 |
| • 4-pipe | -- | 7 |
| Unit heaters | -- | 7 |
| Finned-tube/convector | -- | 6 |
| STEAM DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS | ||
| Finned-tube radiator | -- | 3 |
| Unit ventilator | -- | 3 |
| Two-pipe cast iron radiator | -- | 2 |
| One-pipe cast iron radiator | -- | 1 |
| PERIMETER ELECTRIC SYSTEMS | ||
| Electric resistance baseboard | -- | 2 |
| Through-the-wall packaged units | -- | 1 |
Once you have identified the GHP opportunities in your school division's CIP and ranked them in terms of retrofit compatibility, then you will be ready to use our screening tool to evaluate the economic feasibility of various GHP options compared with conventional HVAC systems.
Explore GHP Options with Screening Tool
Download a self-extracting zip (SEZ) file (download size = 670 kB) of our screening tool by clicking here. First be sure that you have enough free disk space (executable size = 2.3 MB), and then save it in an appropriate folder on your computer. Unzip the file by double-clicking on the 
icon. The program can be launched by double-clicking the 
icon where it appears after the SEZ file has been unzipped.
The Geo4VA screening tool is a "tabbed" calculator, with seven folder tabs across the top, as shown in the following image that shows the first tab page, which appears when the calculator is launched. Note that on opening, the input text boxes for school name and floor area will be blank; the example below shows how these values have been entered for an existing high school in Alexandria, Virginia.
Each of the input pages can be opened by clicking its tab in the top row. Except for the first page, all other input pages have default values, and these can be re-established in one stroke by pressing the [Reset All Inputs] button, which is just to the left of the [Calculate] button.
Just as HVAC retrofit opportunities for GHP equipment should be ranked in terms of system compatibility (re-use potential of existing mechanical components), they also should be ranked in terms of payback period, as calaculated by the screening tool for each project. Although system compatibility would not be an issue for a new school, payback periods should be calculated by using the screening tool to compare a GHP system with each of the different conventional HVAC alternatives likely to be considered for the new school.
Since GHP systems have a higher capital cost than many types of conventional HVAC equipment, payback period is one way to to rank the economic feasibility of different GHP opportunities in the CIP. Simple payback period is the number of years it will take for accumulated annual savings in GHP maintenance and energy costs to “pay back” the GHP capital cost premium relative to a conventional HVAC alternative. Discounted payback period recognizes that a dollar saved in the future is worth less than a dollar spent now, and it should be discounted to its present value using the interest rate on funds borrowed to finance the project.
GHP retrofit opportunities with a compatibility score greater than 5 and a discounted payback period of less than six years are good candidates to carry forward into the next phase of project development. Likewise, new school construction opportunities with a discounted payback period of less than eight years (for the two or three most likely conventional HVAC alternatives under consideration) should also be carried forward into the next phase.