Dr. Yun Yi, Morgan White, Tom Keller, and Joe Villanti met on Zoom to select the buildings for the Architecture fall 2021 class.  The buildings selected are:

• 0154 – Personnel Services Bldg. – Packaged chiller, steam perimeter heat, constant volume fan-coil units.
• 1528 – African Am. Cultural Ctr. – VAV.
• 0209 – Speech and Hearing – AHUs replaced recently and a small/medium sized building. VAV.
• 0075 – Children’s Research Ctr. - AHUs replaced recently and a small/medium sized building. Constant volume re-heat.

Morgan will reach out to UES for energy data and check with UIPD for building documents request process.

All, Steadily picking up around here. Had to pull out the folding stands on a couple occasions. Got a new hire in the works. Dates are set for Light The Night and Bike To Work Day for the fall. On Friday we had a volunteer working towards a membership, which was a welcome occurrence.

This week is business as usual.

The numbers:

Visitors: 20
Sales: $1022.10
Bikes (refurb): 3 for $500
Memberships: 5 for $150
Misc: $58.50

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center

The News-Gazette printed this story about the geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility: https://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/university-illinois/renewable-en...

"URBANA — The University of Illinois’ glossy new building at Springfield Avenue and Wright Street represents the next step in its sustainability goals.

The four-story, 122,000- square-foot, $75 million Campus Instructional Facility is also the biggest geothermal installation on the UI campus.

Its geothermal system can pump 135 tons of hot or cool air into the building. That’s twice as much as the next biggest geothermal system on campus, and about 30 times the amount pumped into an average home.

“The whole world knows about solar and wind power and things like that — hydroelectric power, too — but that’s only the electric side of energy. Energy also includes heating and cooling,” said Morgan White, director of sustainability at UI Facilities & Services. “It’s truly transformative, because it’s moving into the phase of getting us clean thermal energy and not just clean electricity.”

Electricity provides heating and cooling as well, she said, but it’s primarily provided by natural gas, propane and other nonrenewable sources of energy.

The key to the geothermal endeavor? Forty boreholes dug into the Bardeen Quad next to Grainger Library. They’re 20 feet apart, 6 inches wide and drilled 450 feet deep.

Initially, the project required 60 boreholes, but UI researchers reduced that figure — and made the system financially feasible — by checking the thermal conductivity of different rock and soil layers, or the rate that heat passes through them, while considering the depth and flow rate of groundwater.

To keep the building temperate year-round, a mixture of water and glycol circulates from a heat pump in the mechanical room into a pipe that runs up and down the underground field of boreholes.

In winter, the pump pulls heat from the ground into the building. In summer, heat is pumped from the building back into the ground.

“It’s like when you have a bathtub that’s a little too hot or a little too cold, and you pour some water in and stir it up,” White said.

In all, the system reduces the building’s energy consumption by 65 percent compared to a typical heating/cooling installation, saving about $45,000 per year.

Student initiatives helped fund the state-of-the-art thermal system. The 18-member Student Sustainability Committee, funded by the annual “Green Fee” assessed on students, allocated $375,000 — or about 13 percent of the system’s cost — to the facility’s geothermal installation.

The building has a number of other unique features. It contains two dozen new classrooms — one of the highest figures on campus — replete with active-learning and distance-learning spaces. In the fall, engineering courses will occupy most of the space, along with math, statistics and other technical classes.

The facility is also the first UI building funded through a public-private partnership, which allows for tax-exempt financing.

Meanwhile, faculty and graduate students will use temperature information from a 385-foot-deep monitoring well, funded by Facilities & Services and the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment, for continued research opportunities. 

As part of the Illinois Climate Action Plan, the university plans to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Currently, around 12 percent of electricity is provided by renewable sources, like the solar and wind farms near campus, White said. But only 4.5 percent of the UI’s total energy use, counting thermal, comes from renewable sources.

“Clean electricity is important, but it’s not enough,” White said.

In the planning stages, the UI wasn’t supposed to start implementing geothermal systems until 2035, but a suggestion by Yu-Feng Forrest Lin of the Prairie Research Institute jump-started that process."

This is a list of projects that need students to work on.  It will be updated periodically by sustainability staff members, the last update was 6/24/21:

• Develop informational messaging about SmartWay, get more UIUC departments aware of the program, and coordinate a related student event.  Contact Morgan White at mbwhite at illinois.edu.
• Conduct a campus poll (fall semester 2021) regarding the Top 10 most iconic/significant/impressive trees on campus (including the arboretum). Develop an online survey tool (i.e., an online poll) whereby students and campus employees can nominate their favorite campus trees. Upon conclusion of the survey, work with Jay Hayek to tabulate and rank the results and create a publicly viewable ArcGIS Online StoryMap showcasing campuses Top Ten Trees. Prepare a presentation of results for the annual Arbor Day Celebration. Contact Jay Hayek at jhayek at illinois.edu.
• Follow through with Facility Liasons for implementation of recommendations from NRES 285: iCAP Sustainability Ambassadors class: Illini Union.
• Follow through with Facility Liasons for implementation of recommendations from NRES 285: iCAP Sustainability Ambassadors class: Huff Hall.
• Follow through with Facility Liasons for implementation of recommendations from NRES 285: iCAP Sustainability Ambassadors class: ECE Building.
• Follow through with Facility Liasons for implementation of recommendations from NRES 285: iCAP Sustainability Ambassadors class: Armory.
• Follow through with Facility Liasons for implementation of recommendations from NRES 285: iCAP Sustainability Ambassadors class: Bevier Hall.
• CCNet Website: Work with the Champaign County Sustainability Network (CCNet) leadership team to redesign and publish the CCNet website (old version is online at http://www.champaigncountynet.org/). There is a monthly brown bag sustainability networking event on the Third Thursday of each month, but the website hasn't been updated since 2016. Contact Morgan White at mbwhite at illinois.edu.
• We are seeking a student volunteer who can do tree identification for a series of trees in the Arboretum, and work with the University Landscape Architect, Brent Lewis, and the Superintendent of Grounds, Ryan Welch, to compare the tree identification to the draft tree inventory. Contact Morgan White at mbwhite at illinois.edu.
• If you have a project idea, please contact us at sustainability@illinois.edu, or submit it through the iCAP Portal Suggestions page.

All, Made some progress last week on the surplus of scrap bikes that we’d been accumulating. Shop is looking cleaner. Thanks to Todd for picking that up this weekend. We got seven bikes donated from Champaign Cycle, which I was able to pick up on the bike trailer. One of those bikes was a very quick fix and is on the floor ready to be sold. We replaced a damaged fork and now the bike is orange and blue—how appropriate!
I interviewed and began the hiring process for a new student worker.
The community bike ride season is well underway as there was a Juneteenth Freedom Ride last Saturday and two moonlight rides happening this week—one on Friday and one on Wednesday. We’ll talk that up to any visitors this week.

The numbers:
Visitors: 16
Sales: $508
Bikes (refurb): 2 for $290
Memberships: 2 for $60
Misc: 7 for $41

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center