OHSU plans for South Waterfront district energy
POSTED: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 02:02 PM PT
BY: Justin Carinci
Daily Journal of Commerce
Tags: Brian Newman, district energy systems, Moody Avenue, OHSU, South
If they hurry, city and Oregon Health and Science University officials have a chance to develop a district energy system for the South Waterfront. If they wait, the chance could pass.
District energy provides heating and cooling to an entire district, allowing individual buildings to tap into the system. The planned OHSU Schnitzer campus, between the Ross Island and Marquam bridges, would use such a system.
Brian Newman, OHSU’s director of campus planning, development and real estate, sees an opening, literally, with the city’s upcoming Moody Avenue project.
That project will widen and realign Southwest Moody Avenue, add a cycle track and realign and double streetcar tracks, allowing for an eventual connection to the new transit bridge. While the roadway is torn up, Newman wants to reserve tunnels that will eventually carry the district energy system’s pipes.
“Even though that corridor would be built well before we have a system in place, we want to reserve that capacity now,” he said. “Moody is our only chance of getting that done in the near future.”
Federal funding rules require the Moody project to be completed by February 2012; the district energy system could still be in design at that point.
“We can’t wait for this all to resolve itself,” Newman said. “If we can at least get them to resolve the tunnel, we’ll have the luxury of having more time.”
The Portland Development Commission and OHSU are each contributing $25,000 to an effort, starting next week, to get a better sense of the scope of the district energy project. That process will last six to eight weeks, with a feasibility study and design work requiring 12 to 18 months.
A $540,000 federal House Committee on Appropriations request for money would pay for that feasibility and design work. The system would cost at least $15 million to build, according to that request, which is before the committee.
Chris Armes, project manager for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, said Moody project planners will do what they can to accommodate the district energy system. But they’re in a hurry: the Moody design contract goes to City Council next month, and the city will seek proposals from construction managers-general contractors this summer.
“It depends where they’re at with the master plan for the north part of the district,” Armes said. “We’ll incorporate as much as we can, but we’re in the process of looking at the utilities, and where they fit in the streets, and where we’ll be on Moody.”
District energy systems have been used in one form or another for centuries, said John Sorenson, executive director for N2e, a nonprofit energy-system developer. The systems not only transfer energy efficiently, but also provide huge benefits for building owners.
“You don’t have to build into your structure things like boiler rooms and doghouse units on the roof for cooling, and you don’t have to pay for maintenance of those units,” Sorenson said. “Then you have more commercial space you can sell.”
For the South Waterfront, it’s important to get participation from everyone in the district, said Lisa Abuaf, central city manager with the PDC. “This has to be something that adjacent property owners buy into,” she said.
“How we can get buy-in up front, how we get the major institutions, the major stakeholders involved.”
For the developed part of the South Waterfront District, that didn’t happen in time, Newman said. A district energy plan would have served that entire area, but development pressures were too great five years ago.
“It was a different world,” he said. “The economy was strong, and condo builders in particular wanted to take advantage of the market.
“No one wanted to spend the time it took to get district energy,” Newman said. “They just wanted to start moving dirt.”
Those same pressures won’t hamper the next phase of South Waterfront development, he said. “The luxury of the recession is that we have time to answer some of the larger policy questions we didn’t have before.”
http://djcoregon.com/news/2010/04/21...strict-energy/
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