New York, NY

The Cornell Tech campus on New York’s Roosevelt Island is centered on the 150,000 SF Bloomberg Center is designed to be one of the largest Net-Zero energy buildings in the US and the standard-setter for energy performance among buildings of its type. Jeff Urlaub led the design of the geothermal system which includes a heat exchanger of 80 closed-loop, 400’-deep geothermal boreholes. Thermal capacity of the groundwater-filled bores is increased by a novel annulus pumping system that draws water through natural fissures leading to the East River, providing 265 tons of peak cooling capacity.

Muncie, IN

Jeff Urlaub led the design for all stages of this phased geothermal conversion, creating the largest geothermal system on a higher ed campus in the US. Since the system’s startup in 2014, the University has cut its carbon footprint in half and realized over $2M in annual energy savings.

The district geothermal system includes 3,383 bores containing 1,000 miles of high-density polyethylene loop pipe; 10 miles of buried distribution piping; four 2,500-ton heat pump chillers; and, two new district energy stations. This system provides heating and cooling for 47 campus buildings comprising 5.6M SF.

Dearborn, MI

Mike Walters led the engineering team that upgraded Ford’s 6 million SF research, engineering, and design campus to a modern district energy system. The team developed the low entropy master plan and led design of the new central energy plant and distribution systems, including a 34MW combined heat and power system, a chiller plant with heat pumps and high efficiency cooling only chillers, and 40,000 ton-hours of thermal energy storage. The plant was developed using a Design-Build-Own-Operate-Maintain contract.