Developing GHP Opportunities into Projects

Introduction

You have now reached the point where you have an active on-line collaborative team that has finished exploring GHP opportunities in your school division's capital improvement program (CIP) and decided that one or more of these opportunities is sufficiently compelling to pursue further development. This brings your team to Phases III and IV of the collaborative process, continuing to use your team's topic folder in the Geo4VA discussion forum.

Please document the progress of your team in our discussion forum, including setbacks and successes. This is important for two reasons. First, it enables us and our sponsors to measure the impact that the Geo4VA project is having throughout the state. Second, it provides a rich resource for other school divisions who may still be undecided about getting involved, showing them that this process works. Indeed, as pioneering school divisions like the City of Alexandria go through the trial and error of moving their collaboration forward, they can help other divisions learn how to adopt this process to their localities, so that all Virginia schools can benefit from GHP technology.

In Phase III, you will expand your support base by enlisting outside help from community professionals and federal government resources, who can provide independent feedback and advice about the various GHP opportunities your team had identified. In addition to expanding your support base with outside expertise, you can expand your internal support base by making presentations to other CIP stakeholders about GHP technology in general and the most promising GHP opportunities in particular.

Phase IV is reached when CIP decision-makers have agreed that they want to meaningfully include the GHP alternative in feasibility and design studies that issue from the CIP. This is when your team can use downloadable resources on this page to help these decision-makers prepare GHP-friendly bid packages and ensure that responsive bidders adequately document their GHP expertise and experience in their bids.

Phase III.  Expand GHP Support Base

Enlist Outside Help from Community Professionals

Large school divisions have engineers on staff, but collaborative teams in smaller divisions might want to contact professionals in their communities to informally consult on specific technical aspects of their projects. It is preferable that these not be potential bidders on the project, since you want an unbiased perspective on whether or not a project has sufficient merit to go forward. The best candidates would be individuals who want to help on an unpaid basis, either because they work for local businesses that support community-oriented causes, or because they have children attending local schools.

Here is a list of different types of professionals who might be helpful and the specific expertise they can provide, along with suggestions on how to find them in your community:

• Water well drillers have first-hand knowledge of regional geological conditions such as groundwater level (which influences heat transfer capability of soil), typical well yields (important for open-loop GHP systems), and the difficulties likely to be encountered when drilling at different depths. To locate the nearest water well driller, send an e-mail to the South Atlantic Well Drillers trade association by clicking this link.
• Plumbing contractors have experience with installation of indoor-outdoor mechanical systems and associated earthworks for residential and commercial building applications. In looking over the proposed GHP school installation site, they can point out potential problems and offer solutions associated with connecting the ground loop to the indoor building loop. The best resource for a listing of plumbing contractors in your community is the telephone company's local "Yellow Pages."
• Heating and air conditioning contractors with commercial building experience can provide an independent estimate of heating and cooling loads for a particular school, based on their experience with similar building designs in the local climate. For GHP retrofit projects, they also can review the existing heating and cooling systems and advise on the re-usability of various mechanical components. As with plumbers, heating contractors and air conditioning contractors can be found under those respective categories in the "Yellow Pages" of your local phone directory. Also, this link will open a new browser window with an easy-to-use locator maintained by the Air Conditioning Contractors of America.
• Professional architects can be quite helpful in identifying GHP benefits related to building design and construction, such as smaller mechanical rooms and potential for sloped-roof daylighting (in the absence of rooftop HVAC equipment). The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has an excellent Architect Finder for Virginia, which locates AIA members according to city, building type, and type of service. Architects who offer "Sustainable Design" service are likely to be enthusiastic about GHP technology, even if "Schools, K-12" are not the building type they normally design. In fact, care must be taken to not involve architects who might potentially bid on a GHP opportunity, lest such involvement disqualify them from bidding.
• Electric utilities and cooperatives benefit from the installation of new GHP systems in their service territories because the power demand of a GHP system is more constant throughout the day and doesn't entail the high peak demand of other electric heating and cooling systems. This improves the aggregate "load shape" of the utility or cooperative and helps them defer investments in new generation, transmission, and distribution equipment. This can be sufficiently important that some utilities and cooperatives offer capital cost subsidies or electricity pricing incentives for their customers to install GHP systems. Collaborative teams should contact the utility or cooperative that supplies electricity to their school district and see if any GHP incentive programs are available. The utility or cooperative also might be willing to furnish its technical expertise in reviewing electrical design aspects of a proposed GHP system, such as constant- vs. variable-speed drives for loop circulating pumps, and possible demand charge reduction benefits compared with conventional electrical HVAC alternatives.

Bundle GHP Projects with Other Energy Efficiency Enhancements

Including other energy efficiency enhancements in the project package will make the GHP alternative more attractive in two ways. First, GHP systems have a steeper cost-vs.-capacity slope compared with other HVAC systems. While the capital cost of other systems changes relatively little for each additional ton of heating and cooling capacity, the incremental cost of a GHP system can be more than $2,000 per additional ton. Thus, bundling GHP with energy conservation measures to reduce a school's peak heating or cooling load can actually lower the capital cost of the total project (GHP plus other energy efficiency enhancements) relative to a GHP-only project requiring greater installed capacity.

The table below shows the significant impact that energy efficiency enhancements can have on the required capacity of a GHP system, particularly when coupled with the most efficient means of recovering waste heat from exhaust air at the high ventilation rates in school buildings.

Figure 1.  Impact of energy efficiency enhancements on the amount of classroom floor space that can be heated or cooled per ton of GHP system capacity.

The second advantage of a bundled project, payback periods for many other types of energy efficiency enhancements are usually shorter than the payback for a GHP system, such that the economic feasibility of the bundled project is greater. For example, under Virginia's new Public-Private Education Facilities and Infrastructure Act of 2002, an energy service company (ESCO) can bid on a school capital project, where the up-front financing of the capital cost is provided by the ESCO and repaid by the energy-savings over the life of the project. Before an ESCO will bid on such a project, the expected rate of return must exceed a certain threshold, the so-called "hurdle rate," which is based on the ESCO's internal cost of raising money for its projects. Because of its longer payback period, a GHP-only project will have a lower rate or return than a GHP project that is bundled with shorter-payback efficiency enhancements. Thus a bundled project is likely to be more profitable to an ESCO and attract a larger pool of qualified bidders.

There are a variety of resources available to school divisions who want to investigate other energy efficiency enhancements to bundle with GHP projects, and these are listed below:

• Rebuild America EnergySmart Schools :  Rebuild America is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national network of local partnerships engaged in making energy-efficient improvements to reduce energy costs, with the resulting savings used to modernize buildings and revitalize communities. Rebuild America's EnergySmart Schools program focuses on energy education and energy-efficient school design, as part of the larger national commitment to improve the learning environment for students and teachers. Seven Virginia school divisions already have formed Rebuild America partnerships (Arlington County, Covington City, Fairfax County, Harrisonburg City, Roanoke County, and Virginia Beach City), and there are two broader-based county partherships (Chesterfield and Northampton). Contact information and activity summaries for these nine partnerships are posted on the Virginia Community Partnerships page, which also includes contact information for Virginia's Rebuild America representative, who should be contacted if you want to form a new partnership. Three Rebuild America resources are of particular benefit to Geo4VA collaborative teams:
  1. An excellent EnergySmart Schools Resources page, with links to publications that can be freely downloaded, even if your school division is not yet in a Rebuild America partnership. Especially useful is the "National Best Practices Manual for Building High Performance Schools," which can be downloaded as individual .pdf chapters, or as a .zip file of the entire manual (6.8 MB, decompresses to 11.9 MB .pdf), along with a companion set of design guidelines for Virginia's "Temperate and Humid Climate."
  2. Rebuild America Financial Services provides information and case studies about the full range of financing and contracting options available to implement GHP and energy efficiency projects. Most of these publications and any tailored guidance is available only to Rebuild America partnerships.
  3. Access to federal energy technology experts, such as the Federal Energy Management Program's GHP Core Team, who can provide an independent assessment of a GHP project opportunity, and who can identify other energy efficiency enhancements that can be bundled with the GHP system to create a financially viable project. Requests for such assistance can be made only by Rebuild America partnerships and must be made through the Rebuild America K-12 market sector representative.

• ENERGY STAR Schools:  This is a voluntary program managed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whereby a school division can demonstrate its environmental leadership, improves its energy efficiency, and save money, with many opportunities to highlight achievements within the organization and to the general public. There are four Virginia school divisions who are ENERGY Star Schools Partners: Alexandria City, City of Chesapeake, Fairfax County, and Loudoun County. Alexandria is a leading success story featured on the ENERGY STAR Schools Web site. Despite the added load of air conditioning in nine buildings and a technology plan that deployed hundreds of computers and televisions throughout the school system, a comprehensive program of energy efficiency enhancements between 1992 and 1996 led to a $175,000 annual reduction in division-wide enery costs. There is no cost to join, but the Superintendent must sign a partnership letter, committing the division to continuous improvement in energy efficiency. As with DOE's Rebuild America program, some ENERGY STAR resources are freely available to any school division, while other resources are available only to ENERGY STAR partners:
  1. Two freely downloadable documents: a K-12 Press Kit that explains the ENERGY STAR School program, and a Financing Guide that explains alternative ways of financing school energy efficiency propjects.
  2. A freely accessible Purchasing & Procurement page listing manufacturers and models of school and administrative office equipment that meet ENERGY STAR standards.
  3. A series of interactive, on-line training workshops, whereby presentations on a variety of topics are delivered via conference call and the Internet each month. During the presentation, participants can discuss questions with energy and financing experts. There is no cost, but participants must register in advance.
  4. Building energy benchmarking and target-setting tools in an on-line Portfolio Manager, enabling school divisions to set realistic efficiency enhancement goals and obtain recognition by qualifying their buildings for the ENERGY STAR label. A division must be an ENERGY STAR partner to gain access to these tools.

• LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification:  This is a national, consensus-based standard for high-performance, sustainable buildings, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. Unlike the DOE and EPA programs listed above, the scope LEED measures extend well beyond energy efficiency enhancements, including such items as site preservation and impact mitigation, green building materials, and sustainable waste and water management practices. Although there is a cost to register a building for certification, the LEED Standards and associated documentation are freely downloadable and provide more precise specification of energy efficiency and renewable energy design features than the publications listed above.

• Other resources include the Alliance to Save Energy Green Schools program, and the Sustainable Building Industries Council High Performance School Buildings campaign.

Phase IV.  Support CIP Project Bidding

At this point, the school division has agreed to specify that the GHP alternative should be included as a feasibility study option for at least one project in the CIP. If they have not had prior experience with soliciting services for the design and evaluation of a GHP system, this section provides links to Web pages that provide generic guidance on the scope of work for GHP system design and installation. It also provides information on ensuring that potential bidders have appropriate GHP design qualifications and experience.

RFP Language for Including GHP Study

When the school division issues a request for proposals (RFP) for architecture and engineering (A&E) services in support of a CIP project that represents a compelling GHP opportunity, the RFP should include language similar to the following paragraph:

"As part of developing the project design, the A&E firm shall study at least at least ______ (number) alternative HVAC system concepts. One HVAC alternative shall be a geothermal heat pump (GHP) system. A study narrative shall be prepared on the variety of heating, cooling, and ventilation systems that may be needed to meet program requirements and for maintaining a comfortable teaching and learning environment. In evaluating and comparing the different HVAC alternatives, the narrative shall consider the capital and operating cost impact of implementing energy conservation measures, the availability of electric utility company rebates or other incentives, and the level of individual space temperature control afforded by each alternative."

Once a qualified A&E firm has been selected, the scope of work can be based on generic specifications for GHP design from a variety of sources that have been posted on the Web and are freely available for downloading. Links to the most useful of these are listed below:

• Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Atlantic Division, Mechanical Engineering Design Guide (Adobe PDF, pages 17-18)
• Northwest Power Planning Council, Regional Technical Forum, Geothermal Heat Pump Design and Installation (MS Word file, 5 pages)
• Federal Energy Management Program, Contract Tools for Super Energy Savings Performance ContractsTechnology-Specific GHP Super ESPC Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (119-page MS Word file, with userful language on pages 12-14 providing a checklist of GHP features and associated energy conservation measures for possible bundling)

For detail design and construction contracts, the GHP Core Team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has developed the 500-page Generic Guide Specifications for Geothermal Heat Pump System Installation for the Federal Energy Management Program, to assist federal agencies in the preparation of construction specifications for GHP projects. These specifications were developed in the industry-standard Construction Specification Institute format and cover several of the most popular tpes of GHP systems.

These specifications can provide several benefits to the end user that will help ensure a successful GHP system installation. The agency and its selected A&E firm do not have to develop specifications from scratch and can use the specification as a template and/or a checklist in developing both design and the contract documents. The Web page link given above provides access to individually editable Word files for different parts of the specification, as appropriate for the particular type of GHP system to be installed.

Bidder Qualifications for GHP Design

The Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) offers a Certified GeoExchange Designer (CGD) program for professionals who have demonstrated high levels of experience, proficiency, and ethical fitness in applying the principles and practices of GHP design, raise professional standards within the field, and provide a continuing education program of professional development to GHP designers. The CGD certification is granted by the AEE and sponsored by the Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium (GHPC). Associated training is presented by the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association (IGSHPA). More information on the levels of education and experience associated with this certification is posted on the AEE's CGD Web page.