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."

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

F&S submitted the Spring 2021 Semesterly Report to the SSC for the Solar Farm 2.0 Landscape Buffer project!

Read the report in the attached files below.

The final stage of the Solar Farm 2.0 project is wrapping up this month with the planting of a native pollinator habitat. The farm will serve as a major demonstration and research site for pollinator-friendly solar arrays, with more than 6.5 million flowering plants and native grasses around the 54 acres of panels creating a natural habitat for birds and beneficial insects. With this second solar farm, the campus has achieved clean energy goals outlined in the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) nearly four years ahead of schedule. Clean energy production will now support roughly 12 percent of annual campus electricity demand. Congratulations to Facilities & Services for all of the hard work on this important project; iSEE and its SWATeam members were proud to provide key support for Solar Farm 2.0 by pushing for an increased renewable portfolio in the iCAP. Students in iSEE's sustainability minor also helped assess the new array's carbon footprint!

The Spring 2021 iSEE Quarterly Update (iQ) highlighted a diverse array of campus initiatives that made this year's Earth Month one to remember. Ranging from hosted events to sustainable energy, the article discusses the launch of the "TED Talk: Eco Edition" series, Solar Farm 2.0, community trash pickup, and more!

Read the article in the attached files below. 

All, Our first week of summer hours was successful! We were steadily busy and able to sell some bikes, accept some donations, and only had one person bemoan our new hours. Yoshi, who volunteered a couple weeks back was able to come lend a hand, which was super helpful.

This week I’m hiring a new employee who’ll start ASAP. They have loads of experience and will be able to hit the ground running, which will be great. Since the E-week/newsletter blast that Sarthak sent out, we’ve received 12 donations here, so we’re working our way through that stock of bikes; we’ll continue that for this week if it’s slow.

The numbers:

Visitors: 44 (?)
Sales: $918
Bikes (refurb): 3 for $455
Memberships: 1 for $30
U locks: 4 for $84
Tire/tube: 16 for $73

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center

Thank you for attending another excellent TED Talk: Eco-Edition series discussion all about bikes on 5/26! Sarthak Prasad led a great discussion on Wednesday evening after watching Adam Stone’s TED Talk, “How cycling transforms people and places.” Sarthak’s presentation is attached. Be sure to check out the Bike @ Illinois website for more information about the Bike Center, bike routes, safety, and other helpful resources! You are welcome to contact bike@illinois.edu at any time with questions or feedback.

Thank you again for attending on Wednesday, and we look forward to seeing you at our next TED Talk discussion in June on the topic of water! Stay tuned for more details by checking out the iSEE Sustainability Calendar and signing up for the newsletter. Have a nice and safe Memorial Day weekend!