Transcript:
Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania will soon heat and cool its buildings by using the ground as a giant thermal battery.
The college is building a central geoexchange plant connected to pipes that stretch 800 feet underground.
In summer, the system pulls heat from buildings, transfers it to water in the pipes, and then pumps the warm water underground to store the heat in the earth.
Drake: “In the winter, the system runs in the opposite direction. We extract heat from the ground, lift the temperature of that water using the geoexchange plant, and send that warm water to our campus buildings to heat them.”
Elizabeth Drake is the assistant vice president for sustainability and strategic initiatives at Swarthmore.
The geoexchange system will run on renewable energy and replace the school’s aging heating system, which runs on fossil fuels. So it will help Swarthmore reach its goal of eliminating or offsetting all of its carbon pollution by 2035.
The system is under construction, but a few buildings are already hooked up.
And Drake says that students and faculty are excited.
Drake: “And I think that the commitment to climate action and decarbonization that we’re doing through this project is a point of pride for the campus.”
Reporting credit: Ethan Freedman / ChavoBart Digital Media
