Public Power - September 2008 - (Page 44)

LEEDing Green The Illinois Municipal Electric Agency’s new LEED-certified headquarters has a geothermal heating and cooling system. Photo courtesy of IMEA. to pay for it was. “When we started out, we knew we wanted LEED certification, probably gold,” said Steve Johnson, WPUDA executive director. “Then we saw the possibility of platinum.” For the $3.5 million, 11,000-square-foot building, the cost difference between gold and platinum certification was $350,000. All 27 members agreed on the gold level, but “there wasn’t unanimity to go to platinum,” said Court Olson, a senior project manager for Olympic Associates, which served as project manager for the building’s design and construction. Construction and gold certification costs were split among the members according to their size, but only half volunteered to pay for the leap to platinum; the other $175,000 was covered through a donation of 160 solar panels by Norwegian manufacturer REC Silicon, which has a large silicon-purification plant in Washington. That donation closed the gap and ensured WPUDA’s new headquarters would be one of just 74 platinum-certified buildings in the country. All but one of the solar panels is installed on the roof generating power. It took three years to design and develop the building, but construction only took six months and completed in October 2007. The biggest construction issue involved the solar panels, which were manufactured in Sweden from purified silicon originating in Washington. Although the panels were fully certified by TÜV Rheinland, the European equivalent of Underwriters Laboratories, Washington’s state official electrical inspector was concerned about 44 SEPTEMBER 2008 their safety. Fortunately, TÜV Rheinland has an office in Beaverton, Ore., and Oregon staff wrote a detailed explanation for the state inspector “substantiating the process the European Union accepts, showing its validity and demonstrating comparability with Underwriters Laboratories,” Olson said. Ultimately, “reason prevailed,” and the state’s electrical inspector approved the panels and their installation, said Johnson. Just as the solar panels represented the biggest construction challenge, they also represent the greenest feature of the building. “Their maximum capacity is 34 kW, but right now we only have about a 5 kW load,” Johnson said. “When the building is full, we’ll probably have a load of 10 kW. Production on even an overcast day is 17 to 20 kW. So almost every day the building is making more energy than we use. In winter at night, though, we’ll buy energy.” When it comes to payback time for the building, WPUDA is cautious. “We estimate breaking even at 23 years,” Olson said. “But the building lifetime should be about 50 years, so we’ll make money after 23 years.” To better refine its payback forecast, WPUDA is collecting data from the solar power system. “Our members sometimes find themselves at odds with environmentalists,” Johnson said, “but we saw this as a way to show we do care about the environment and that we’re leaders in deploying these environmentally safe and renewable technologies. We want our customers to build green, so we should lead the way.” ❚ PUBLIC POWER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - September 2008

Public Power - September 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions What’s Good About RTOs? Capturing Coal’s Carbon Carbon Safety Valves Greater Glass, Greater Savings Getting Customers to Embrace Compact Fluorescent Lights LEEDing Green Kansas City Shows How to Build Green For Governing Boards Safety Community Broadband Hometown Connections Parting Shot

Public Power - September 2008

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