Using "waste-water" for energy independence: Transcriptions II

Amy:

Take 1:

The regional geo-exchange project is a project that was conceived around the idea of building zero net energy communities that can be replicated all throughout the united states and preferably the world. The backbone is a geothermal loop system that runs through the community that can pipe waste water, which can act as a heating and cooling sink, to lower the energy needs of the buildings to the point where the balance can be made up through a combination of energy efficiency measures, to bring down the energy use of the building and then that remainder can be brought up using renewable energy such as solar and wind power. The idea is to be able to build a template that can then be replicated all throughout the United States. The project was called "regional geo-exchange" because we initially had three different locations in Sonoma county that we want to do this. One was out at the airport treatment center, which surrounds a mostly office building industrial park; another location was over in Geyserville, which is a very residential area, and lastly over in Sonoma Valley is much more of a manufacturing industrial facility. So the idea was to be able to form three distinct land community building use types of these zero net energy communities so whenever we try to go into a different location throughout the country, we would have a template that was really tailored for that area.

Take 2:

The regional geo-exchange energy efficiency program is a program designed to create zero net energy communities that we can then replicate throughout the country and hopefully throughout the world. The idea is to form a backbone using a geothermal loop system that can provide heating and cooling offsets for buildings in the community. Once you've reduced the heating and cooling loads for that, for those buildings, you can then make up the balance using a combination of energy efficiency and then renewable energy such as solar or wind energy to get as close to possible to zero net energy. And the idea is, once you have this wonderful community template you can then replicate it.

Take 3:

The great thing is that once you have this template already created with these zero-net-energy communities, you can then take this and replicate it throughout the country and throughout the world.

Take 4:

The regional geo-exchange energy efficiency project is a concept that develops zero net energy communities that hopefully can be replicated throughout the country and then throughout the world. The idea for these communities are based upon a geo-thermal loop backbone that runs throughout the community which can then lower the heating and cooling needs of the buildings to the point where you have only a little bit left and you can make up that little bit left of energy using a combination of energy efficiency and renewable energies such as solar and wind to create as close as possible to a zero net energy community.

Take 5:

The regional geo-exchange energy efficiency project is a project that's developed to create zero net energy communities that can hopefully be replicated throughout the country and then throughout the world.

Take 6:

The regional geo-exchange energy efficiency project is a project that's developed to try to create zero net energy communities throughout the nation...

Take 7:

The regional geo-exchange energy efficiency project is a program designed to help create zero net energy communities that can then be replicated throughout the country and then hopefully throughout the world. The backbone of these communities is a geothermal loop system that runs throughout the community carrying waste water from waste water treatment plants that otherwise would just be discharged. This wastewater can then be run through the buildings to offset the heating and cooling loads; the idea is once you can bring a buildings heating and cooling loads down you're left with just a little bit left to get to zero net energy. You can then make up that little bit amount using a combination of energy efficiency measures such as reduced lighting, adjusting HVAC, and then making up the balance with renewable energy such as solar or wind power. Using these combinations of technologies you can then get as close to zero net energies as possible in a community fashion. And then once you have this technique developed, replicate it all throughout the country and hopefully throughout the world.

Take 8:

Well these regional geo-exchange energy efficiency projects that we're developing also bring in a transportation component. So you are hitting all four legs of sustainability enterprise. If you have all of these buildings partially powered with solar energy, and you can then install an, um, electric vehicle plugs throughout all of them and you can not only hit the energy efficiency and energy use in the buildings, you can then take that to the transportation and fuel offset and create a truly zero net energy community.

Take 9:

Another aspect to these geo-exchange energy efficiency projects that we're developing on a community scale is once you have the rooftop solar or the solar fields providing electricity, clean electricity, we can then start building plug-in stations to charge electric vehicles that employees can then use for commuting so you not only can address the building's energy use on a community scale, you can then start to address the transportation and reducing the fossil fuels and really becoming a clean zero net energy community.

Take 10:

The airport business center has been developed over the past 20 years out here in the north end of Sonoma County. It's kind of geographically isolated which makes it actually a really good test location to try these new technologies. It has approximately 82 buildings; we have a mix of large office buildings, we have industrial uses, we have laser factories, tortilla factories, we have an airport, we have wine facilities, gas stations, movie theatres, we've got it all out here, and a school. So it makes a really really good wide mix of...

Take 11:

The diversity of the buildings out here make it a really good test case to try this technology on a wide range of building types and uses.

Take 12:

It is the great diversity of building types that we have out here that make it such a great test case for the entire world.

Take 1 3:

One of the great things about this project that's going to make it a real success is that it truly is a public-private partnership. We've partnered up with the building owners here, we have the airport green business community that has come together to form a coalition to help further this project along on the private side, so it's a perfect marriage, a partnership here.

Take 14:

One of the great things about this project is that it truly is a public-private partnership. The building owners and property owners in the area have come together to form the airport green business community who work with us and their sole purpose is to help move this project forward, and educate the building owners on how they can address energy use reduction.

Take 15:

It is the great diversity of building types we have out here that make it such a great test case for the entire world.

Take 16:

One of the great things about this project that is going to make it a real success is that it truly is a public private partnership. We've partnered up with the building owners here; we have the airport green business community that has come together to form a coalition to help further this project along on the private side so it is a perfect marriage or partnership here.

Take 17:

One of the great things about this project is that it truly is a public private partnership. The building owners and property owners in the area have come together to form the airport green business community who work with us. And our sole purpose is to help move this project forward, and educate the building owners on how they can address energy use reduction.

Take 18:

One of the great things about this project that's going to make it a real success is that it truly is a public private partnership. We've partnered up with the building owners here. We have the airport green business community that has come together to form a coalition to help further this project along on the private side . So it's a perfect marriage of partnership here.

Take 19:

One of the great things about this project is that it truly is a public-private partnership. The building owners and property owners in the area come together to form the airport green business community, who work with us, and their sole purpose is to help move this project forward and educate the building owners on how they can address energy use reduction...

Take 20:

Well this project, it's big, it's new, it's a great wonderful visionary idea, but we new that it would be irresponsible to just go and start building out this community-wide project with no test case. So what we decided to do was to take our office building here at 404 Aviation Boulevard and do a little mini-geo-exchange project on it. So we're dr... we drilled our own wells out there and we're going to be hooking up this building to its own heat pump system and basically create a mini-version of what we're going to try to do out there in the community. So once we take it and we learn and see how it works on our 404 Aviation building we'll take those lessons and we'll go out and we'll make very smart decisions about how we approach the region wide project.

Take 21:

This project, our regional geo-exchange energy efficiency project, it's big, it's innovative, it's new. So we knew we couldn't just go out there and build out this big project with nothing to base it on. So what we decided to do was to use our building, 404 Aviation boulevard, as a test case, we already had previously reduced our energy use using energy efficiency measures throughout the building, and reduced all of our lighting systems to as low as possible then we also added rooftop solar; we are now providing half a megawatt of solar which actually pretty much takes the electricity of the building off the grid.

Take 22:

Well we knew we had to start somewhere. So we decided to take this building 404 Aviation Boulevard and make it a test case for the energy project as a whole. We had already reduced our energy use down using efficiency measures with a combination of lighting retrofits throughout the building, and solar. We have half a megawatt of solar facilities on our building; that pretty much takes our zero net electricity use to zero. Now we have to address heating and cooling. So in order to emulate what we are trying to build out there, we went and drilled our own geothermal system out in the parking lot, and we are going to hook it up to the building using heat pumps, exactly like we plan to do throughout the whole business park. Once we do that we'll have our lessons learned and we'll be able to take those lessons and make very smart decisions economically about how we approach the community project.

Take 23:

This project is new, but it's great and it's innovative, and we're so convinced that it's going to be a success that we're trying it out here on our very own building at 404 Aviation before we go out and do the whole business park.

Take 24:

This is new. This is innovative. But we're so convinced that this is going to be a success that we're trying it out on our own building first.