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Guest Column: 10-year payback and long-term geothermal costs
by Craig Artist, School Superintendent · Op-Ed · April 02, 2008
How long will the debt service be on the bond issue at the elementary HVAC system?
At the March board meeting, the directors have built consensus around adopting a 10-year plan should the bond issue pass.
According to our information, the shorter the term, the better. If we compare the 10-year plan with a comparable 20-year plan, the dollar savings collectively throughout the district is almost $900,000 if we stay at a shorter term to pay back the bonds.
What this means for a home owner who has a home valued at $150,000 is a yearly cost of about $107, or about $9 a month. For someone that has a 100 acre farm, the cost per year would be about $111, or about $9.25 a month. These costs included the roll back figures used to calculate taxes of residential and farm land values.
Would there be any way to project the before and after cost differential of a geothermal system?
While every building and situation is different, the number of testimonials regarding geothermal systems has been overwhelmingly positive. More and more school districts have reported 20-30 percent reduction in their gas usage in buildings with geothermal. In some districts, as reported from the Iowa Energy Center, the reduction of natural gas usage has been near 40 percent.
In our situation, we will be adding air-conditioning which will affect the total energy reduction. From the testimonials, information from Iowa Energy Center and our engineering firm, evidence is telling us that we will have a reduction of total yearly cost even when air-conditioning is added.
Due to the fact that every building is different, it is very difficult to come up with a figure that would project our savings. There appears to be quite a range of cost per square-foot between that of a geothermal system and that of a conventional system. In some school districts the cost per square-foot could be as low as 42 cents for new construction geothermal systems or higher than $1.00 per square foot for an aged conventional system. Looking at various school districts, it appears that the cost of many conventional systems before converting to geothermal is in the range of 80 cents to $1 per square foot. After geothermal is installed, the cost seems to drop down to about the 60- to 75-cent level. Again, it is difficult to project what our situation will present.
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