Heat is on!

Housing turned on the heat today. Now we can't figure out how to turn it off! The thermostat in the kitchen seems to work to regulate the kitchen/living room heater, but the bedroom heater seems to be on constitutively. I did find this handy link for instructions on how to adjust the heater settings, though! Having the heat on has caused a drastic increase in the humidifier output rate, which was expected. Now we'll really see if it's effective.

Speaking of heating, I'm pretty proud that our heating comes from steam generated at a cogen plant on campus (a combined-cycle one at that). Whenever you run a steam turbine, you will need to condense the steam back into water. Cogen means using the district's heating needs as part of that condenser. The primary purpose is to generate steam for heating, but running the steam through a turbine (and while you're at it, using a gas turbine to generate the hot air for boiling the steam) allows you to opportunistically generate electricity at high efficiency. The cogen plant also runs steam-powered chillers to provide process cooling water.

There is much talk, though, of switching to a hot-water district heating system using electric-powered regeneration chillers (heat pumps to simultaneously chill the chilled water and heat the hot water) as part of Stanford's green energy initiative. It would reduce water use from steam leaks and evaporative cooling towers. Whether or not it reduces greenhouse gas emissions will depend on where we buy our electricity from, and the projected costs will depend on the volatility of natural gas prices, so it's hard to say definitely whether it's a good idea, but not taking advantage of this cogen opportunity seems like a waste.