Alternative Heating for my High School?

Question

For my senior project, I am thinking about planning for my high school to use alternative energy to cut down on high gas prices for heating our school during the winter. I know that wind power, solar power, etc. can be used to generate electricity, which I may also look into, but I'm not too sure where to start for alternative heating. Any ideas?

P.S.- My school is situated on top of a hill, so there is ample wind and sun available. And it's in Massachusetts, so we do get fairly cold winters.

Answer 1

The only one that your school might ever be able to afford and therefore be realistic would be additional insulation.

Answer 2

The short answer is Ground Source Heating.  It's a little too complicated to educate you on it here, so look it up...but the general idea is to uses the constant temperature of the ground (around 50-60 degrees) to heat (or cool) the building.  It costs more than a conventional heat pump to install but because of it's higher efficiency (they can save 30-50% in energy costs) they can pay for themselves in a matter of years.  They are especially well suited for large applications (such as your school)

As it applies they are technically not using an alternative energy source (unless you count the energy SAVED by using the ground temp) but they use far less electricity to run, this would make exclusive solar energy a more reasonable solution for HVAC, where the cost to run a conventional electric HVAC unit on solar panels would be absurd.

Answer 3

How about parabolic solar batch water collecters, then piped through a length of pex tube in a partially bricked "radiator?"  

That way you get a raise in thermal during the day, and hopefully enough heat into the brick to be released during the night.

Contact me if you think that might be interesting to try and experiment with.