Planet Forward Original Webisodes
Building Green for the Future
THIS WEEK: Wish more of your tax dollars could stay in your pocket? This week Planet Forward spoke with some experts at the US Green Building Council about the potential savings in building more efficient schools!
FROM OUR BLOG: Check out USGBC’s statistics on improving schools and universities around the country and how much it can save in this week’s guest blog. Also check out PFF-er, Fuzz Hogan‘s blog post about combining community schools with green schools for the best of both worlds!
FROM OUR NEWSDESK: We could use the savings too, according to this article submitted by Planet Forward’s Charlie Rybak which says the U.S. is seeing the most expensive natural disasters in history!
FROM OUR PARTNERS: For more from USGBC experts Rachel Gutter and Rick Fedrizzi check out their ideas by going to the COMMIT!Forum group on PlanetForward.org!
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On November 11th, 2011 at 8:47 am Ron Tolmie Said:
In most of North America schools have approximately the same heating load in the winter and cooling load in the summer. That means that they can store the AC heat extracted in the summer and use it to heat the schools in the winter without adding or extracting any net heat to the ground. (Any imbalance can be made up using a simple air heat exchanger)
If the heat transfer in the opposing seasons is balanced then a compact ground store can be used and its temperature can be optimized to achieve a high COP for the heat pump. That minimizes both the capital cost and the operating cost.
In a compact ground store the boreholes are much closer together than those used for a ground source heat pump system. A planar heat exchanger such as the “slinky” design is not suitable.