The Jamestown Board of Public Utilities has announced plans to expand and retool its district heating system.
The announcement follows a 15-month engineering study by Ramboll Engineering that was funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The study provides the BPU with suggested alternative fuel sources for the thermal heating network.
Since 1984, the BPU has generated hot water that is distributed through insulated underground lines that flow throughout downtown Jamestown and north on Main Street to provide hot water and heat to the 70 buildings on the system, including hundreds of apartments, school buildings, churches and other private and public facilities.
The BPU’s coal power plant originally supplied the heat for the system with the system now heated through natural gas generation.
BPU General Manager David Leathers said the utility is planning to transition away from natural gas as the primary fuel source to heat the system due to the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
BPU Transmission and Distribution Manager Kris Sellstrom outlined the two most economical choices the utility has selected for further engineering analysis from the more than thirty options evaluated.
He stated, “This first option leverages the BPU’s wastewater treatment plant which has a constant flow of cleaned warm water leaving the facility where a heat exchanger and water heat pump could extract this continuous supply of thermal energy. This type of solution is utilized in European countries, so the technology is proven.”
Sellstrom added, “However, this option requires a significant increase in the amount of underground pipe to travel from our current system through our industrial areas in Jamestown and Falconer to the BPU Wastewater Treatment Plant located on Quaint Road in the Town of Poland. New customers would need to be added along this additional pipe to provide a competitive levelized energy cost.”
Leathers noted that there are more than 40 potential customers in the path leading from Buffalo Street through the industrial area of Allen Street to the Quaint Road facility, including two schools and many manufacturing facilities.
Sellstrom said ground-source heat extraction that uses a “significant number of closed-loop wells” is the second option. He said the next step is to drill a few thermal test wells near the power plant to evaluate, “…the thermal energy extraction rate per foot in our area which is a key factor in the quantity and depth of wells that would need to be drilled to supply sufficient energy for the current system and, therefore, the overall economics of the project. If a high energy extraction rate is available, geothermal may be the most economical heating method we can utilize while working within the State’s Climate Act.”
Leathers said the two new heating methods that have been selected for further review and analysis will require federal and state funding to study and “undertake the ‘retooling’ of our District Heating system.”
He said NYSERDA has a Flex-Tech grant program that is currently available to help industries study their heating systems and overall efficiency with the potential to evaluate possibly joining an expanded District Heating system.
In the meantime, the BPU will continue working to replace aging pipes and valves.
Leathers said the utility should be ready by 2030 to move forward with a new path for the District Heating division.
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