A trip that was almost scrapped because of scheduling conflicts received a jolt of inspiration to help out a Cordova business owner.
Ten students in the Upward Bound and Teaching Through Technology (T3) Alliance programs, including two students from Wrangell, conducted an energy audit for the Orca Adventure Lodge to help its owner see where he could save energy and money.
Originally, the trip was going to involve more students and be more of a leadership conference. Since basketball schedules kept many kids from attending, organizers switched focus to be a hands-on learning project.
Wrangell High School juniors Spencer Petticrew and Sean McDonald joined students from Bethel, Sitka, Seward and Cordova to conduct an energy audit of the lodge from Feb. 1-6. McDonald worked on the team conducting the audit, while Petticrew was part of the storytelling team to create a presentation of their findings.
Students swapped out older, inefficient lightbulbs with new, lower-wattage bulbs. They also used a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera to detect where heat could be escaping the lodge.
Images from the camera taken inside show red, orange, yellow and white areas where the heat is being kept in and dark blue to black spots where heat is being lost. Those spots are likely missing insulation. Outside images taken with the FLIR show just the opposite colors, with the red and orange hues showing places leaking heat.
The lodge, originally built as a cannery in the late 1800s, is currently heated using a hot water system to deliver heat to multiple buildings on the property. Owner Steve Ranney said when they occasionally run low on hydroelectric power, they switch over to a diesel engine to run the system, which drives up energy costs.
There are 40 rooms with private bathrooms in the lodge, which is 16,163 square feet.
One of the things the students suggested and Ranney has considered is switching to ground-sourced thermal heating, which pumps water into an underground closed-loop system, heating it naturally, then sending it back aboveground to heat the buildings. Once the students finished their audit, they presented their findings to Ranney, who has owned the lodge for 24 years. By switching to such heating, the team estimated he could save $34,244 a year on energy costs. That doesn’t include additional savings that could come from extra insulation or other easier fixes.
“I think they are pretty close on cost savings,” Ranney said. “There’s a lot of seasonal variability on our electric rates, however. In the winter, when we run low on hydropower and have to switch to diesel generators, the cost of power goes up considerably. I would expect the overall end result to be a net gain as well as less carbon emissions.”
Ranney said the cost to convert to the thermal heating system would be around $150,000.
The experience has taken McDonald and Petticrew from book knowledge to practical learning. They intend to use the audit experience to help residents and businesses in Wrangell.
“There is like a 99% possibility that we’re going to take what we know from this and how to conduct an energy audit and apply it to our own communities,” McDonald said. “Realistically, you don’t need that many people to do it. It will just take longer. We have plans to conduct test audits on one of our houses. Then we can take that and upscale it to use on a building like the school or a maintenance facility. The possibilities are endless.”
McDonald said the students involved in the Orca Adventure Lodge audit are working on obtaining grants so that they can purchase FLIR cameras for use in each of their own towns. Though they don’t need the equipment to conduct audits, it helps to have a better overall snapshot of the inefficiencies of the structures.
Both Petticrew and McDonald feel better about their abilities after the trip, stating they knew in theory how to do the energy audits, they just hadn’t applied the knowledge.
“You know how they say learn by doing? We learned, but we hadn’t done it yet,” Petticrew said. “Now we’ve done it.”
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