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PrintBubbling beneath Brady Town Square
Tulsans are seeing plenty of activity in Brady Village, but what’s bubbling below ground is even more exciting to energy buffs.
Beneath Brady Town Square lies a public geothermal well field, which those involved with the Brady Village Green Sustainability Project hope will bring clean, renewable energy to the doorstep of nearby residences and businesses.
Why the fuss? How unusual is it to use a public park as a geothermal well field?
“This will be the only district heating/cooling pilot project in America using geothermal energy,” says Tony Knowles, former Alaska governor and current executive director of the National Energy Policy Institute, headquartered in Tulsa.
Brady Village is the historic industrial area downtown between Denver and Detroit avenues, just north of the BNSF Railroad. The George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) is the primary funder — and future resident — of the redevelopment. And if all goes according to plan, the neighborhood’s commercial, residential and government buildings should be able to “just plug into geothermal,” Knowles says.
The idea is to reduce energy demand, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions and to create and retain jobs that support state businesses. So far, Oklahoma expertise has touched every aspect of the design, manufacturing and installation, thanks to input from Wallace Engineering, StoneBridge Group, Phillips + Bacon Engineers, K&M Shillingford Inc., ClimateMaster, AEP/PSO and McElroy Manufacturing.
Originally, the well field was to provide power for the Mathews building — the new home to GKFF, several arts organizations and a portion of a Gilcrease art collection. Then the scope grew, and the new thinking became, “Let’s make it a demonstration of a green field,” says Stanton Doyle, GKFF senior program officer.
Tom Wallace of Wallace Engineering agreed. He was part of the collaborative group that first thought of powering the Mathews building geothermally.
“We want to enhance (the well), to dig deeper to make it more robust,” he says. “I’m confident we can do some clever things so it can serve more square footage.”
Doyle predicts it will “become a jewel in the middle of the neighborhood.”
The geothermal well field will reduce energy usage by 560,000 kilowatt hours per year, saving $167,000 annually. Local property owners, businesses and residents will reduce utility costs by 30 percent to 40 percent, and carbon dioxide by 1,012 tons. Job estimates include 75 created for the construction phase of the project and approximately 150 retained in retail, mining, production and transportation.
Wallace jokes that some people think of geothermal as drilling to the center of the earth for steam, and more accurately called his process “geo-exchange.” It moves the water back and forth, from the ground to the buildings, using a loop that circulates water through a pump.
Geothermal, or geo-exchange, is more expensive to install, “but anyone who will keep a building for five years is nuts not to do this,” Wallace says. “Who doesn’t want their electric bill to be half? There’s no gas bill either.”
According to Knowles’ estimate, geothermal provides three to five units of energy for every unit of energy it takes to produce. The savings in utility costs can pay for the system in five or six years — even faster when tax credits apply.
As the conversation about conservation and renewable energy heats up, “most people are talking about wind and natural gas. We think this (geothermal) is a real sleeper,” Knowles says.
