Dec 27, 2007 11:23 pm US/Central
Project Energy: Touring The New Great River Energy
MAPLE GROVE, Minn. (WCCO) ―
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It's kind of interesting when you think about the fact that Great River Energy is a company that makes money selling energy. And that they would be so concerned about being efficient.
CBS
Electric company Great River Energy is building its new headquarters in Maple Grove and new to the Twin Cities landscape is a 165-foot high windmill crews just finished installing. Once it's up and running it will pump out power to as many as 100 homes.
The windmill is just one feature that Great River says makes its new building unique. In Project Energy, Don Shelby takes on a tour of the construction site to show the other unique features.
Shelby
:
Well, we're here at Great River Energy, the brand new building they say is going to be at some point the most energy efficient building in the Upper Midwest and Randy Fordice is here with us and he's going to take us around and show us what makes it so energy efficient. Ready to go?
Fordice:
Let's go.
Shelby
:
All right.
Shelby
:
The first thing you notice when you drive up to this building is that it's almost all glass. Why?
Fordice:
One of the biggest costs in any building is lighting. So one of the things that we've done with this building is orient it so it faces north and south. And we've got as much glass as possible so we can use that daylight to act as our lighting for the building.
It's kind of interesting when you think about the fact that Great River Energy is a company that makes money selling energy. And that they would be so concerned about being efficient.
Gary Connett, Great River Energy:
It's less expensive to conserve energy than it is to build new power plants.
Connett is the director of environmental stewardship at Great River Energy. He said conserving energy is a concern for everyone and his company wants to lead the way.
Connett:
The reason others should look at this building is because of its overall sustainability. It's not all about energy efficiency. It's about water conservation. It's about building right, it's about building in this location and orienting your building in the right way. It's a bunch of things and these are simple things that all people can do when they look at building a large building such as this or even their homes.
Shelby
:
There's a lot of concrete here not only in the groundwork and the paving, but also in the building. But the thing I think people don't understand is that one of the biggest CO2 producers in the world are cement and concrete plants. And you're finding a way to use less of that to save energy.
Fordice:
What we've decided to do is use fly ash as part of the concrete mixture.
Shelby
:
What's fly ash?
Fordice:
Fly ash is the product that is left after you burn coal to generate electricity.
Shelby
:
And you got plenty of that.
Fordice:
Yes we do. And normally that is taken to a landfill. What we can also do with the fly ash is sell that product and have it used in cement. This building we're using about 50 percent of the mixture, just under 50 percent, is going to be fly ash mixed with cement to form the concrete.
Shelby
:
Reuse, recycle and cut CO2 emissions.
Fordice:
Exactly.
Shelby:
Randy, one of the things I'm noticing here too is all of your bins for surplus and for scrap, all marked steel only, wood only why's that?
Fordice:
Well we're going to recycle a lot of the materials that are used in construction. As a lot of people know, it's going to be a LEED certified building.
Shelby
:
Let me stop you there because you said it's LEED-certified. What does that mean?
Fordice:
Well, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. And in addition to the building being energy efficient and sustainable, that extends to construction practices as well. One of the things that we're doing is recycling the wood debris, the steel debris and things like that. And to make sure that the building is as sustainable as possible from the time we put a shovel in the ground through the time where people are occupying the building.
For more information on Great River Energy and LEED ratings, click on the links below.
Great River Energy
LEED Rating System
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