A natural gas power plant on Bellingham’s waterfront might cut a third of Western’s $1.6 million spent on heat, according to Western Facilities Management.
Heat that is otherwise unused from the Puget Sound Energy-owned plant would be used to heat water that would be transported to campus to provide heat to its buildings. Using the water from the plant will save up to a third of the natural gas used by Western, said Tim Wynn, Western’s Facilities Management director.
Wynn said Western still needs to study how much the project will cost and how to efficiently transport water from the plant to campus. Once that is figured out, the findings will be presented to the Port of Bellingham and the City of Bellingham, which will then decide if it is worth going forward.
He said the study should be finished by the end of the school year.
The plant is located at the end of Cornwall Avenue, just south of where the Georgia-Pacific mill used to be located. That plant uses natural gas that powers a generator to create exhaust that will essentially boil water. The water creates steam that is captured in a contained environment, he said. The pressure of the steam then spins a secondary generator, allowing the plant to produce twice the amount of electricity.
Wynn said the water would most likely be transported to the campus by a pipe. The problem is finding a route that would cause minimal destruction to the surrounding neighborhoods. Wynn is also looking into whether the emissions generated from the plant will be affected when heat is drawn away.
While Wynn is studying the costs of the process, the university’s tight budget might not have enough to support it. However, Wynn mentioned three possibilities for funding the project.
The first is to receive funding from the Washington State Energy Conservation Program.
The second is by a private business building a utility plant to bring the water up from the plant. He said the campus would then commit to a long term purchasing of the water.
A third way would be to sell bonds based on production and sales of the hot water that would be sold from a separate entity created by Western, the City of Bellingham and the Port of Bellingham.
