Hospital’s Stormwater Pond Doubles as Heat Exchanger
Rising energy prices have project owners crunching the numbers, and some are finding that “hot” green technologies, such as geothermal heat exchange, can generate cold cash.
Sherman Health, owner of a 255-bed hospital going up in the Chicago suburb of Elgin, Ill., plans to save more than $1 million a year by tapping into a 15-acre, 17-ft-deep geothermal lake—one of the world’s largest—which will provide heating and cooling for the 650,000-sq-ft facility. The decision to go geothermal for the $310-million project, which broke ground in June 2006 and is scheduled to open in early 2010, was a “fiscally responsible” choice, owner officials say.