Link to January 12 Capital Times article by Steve Arnold.Excerpt: On Tuesday, Jan. 12, the Fitchburg City Council will make a once-in-a-century decision: Shall it borrow against future energy savings to install geothermal heating and cooling in its new library building?
The building is otherwise designed for a 100-year service life. The decision must be made now, however, whether to install a 20th or 21st century heating and cooling plant. The conventional system burns natural gas for heating and uses electricity to power air conditioning, while the geothermal system uses electric heat pump technology to cool the building (and warm the earth under the parking lot) in the summer and warm the building with the heat stored underground in the winter. Both systems use electricity for moving air and controlling dampers. Unfortunately, the two systems require different building designs.
The vote tonight should be interesting. The mayor had a meeting yesterday to discuss the option in more details (no decisions made). Ideally, this would have be considered earlier. However, if the people are for it I say it's a good idea. I just hope that they are. If not I have a bad feeling that the Library Board will get flack for it rather than the Mayor.
ReplyDeleteQuick update. So, the vote at the City Council meeting tonight was to postpone the vote until the next meeting (i.e. 2 weeks). Some very passionate discussion.
ReplyDeleteSo, it looks like we will get geothemal! The council passed a resolution on Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteSee link to minutes: http://www.city.fitchburg.wi.us/meeting_minutes/files/CC_012610_MN.pdf
ReplyDeleteAgenda item 10, Old Business