| Abstract |
Seven of Klamath Falls, Oregon public schools and college are heated with geothermal energy. All of the schools have individual wells, extracting the heat with either downhole heat exchangers, or pumping the water directly into the building heating system and then disposing of the water into injection wells. A student can attend all his schools, from grade school through to college, that are heated with geothermal energy. A description of the energy use and heating system for Roosevelt Grade School, Ponderosa Middle School, and Klamath Union High School are described - all of which the author (Thomas) has attended. Roosevelt Grade School has two wells in its play ground/parking lot, each 150 m deep with temperatures around 90oC, using downhole heat exchangers to extract the heat. Ponderosa Middle School also uses downhole heat exchangers to extract the heat from a 170-m deep geothermal well at 93oC. This well is located near the original “Devil’s Tea Kettle, a spring that was used by transients before being covered by highway construction. Klamath Union High School, due to its high heat demand, pumps the water directly from a geothermal well 78 m deep at 89oC, and then extracts the heat inside in the mechanical room. The spent water is then injection into a second well 76 m away. The high school also used to heat a swimming pool, site of an old natatorium that was used in the 1920s and 1930s. The wells are located on what was called “Big Springs”, the high school football field. These natural springs were used by the Native Americans and early European settlers for cooking food, bathing, and warming benches for ice skating. The total peak energy use of these three schools is 6.8 GJ/hr (2.0 MWth) and the annual energy use is 14.9 TJ/yr (4.1 GWh/yr), saving US$206,000 annually in heating cost. |