Lewis Center Falling Short

To the Editors:

John Scofield’s letter in the Review’s Perspectives section (“Concerns About Lewis Center’s Use of Energy,” Oct. 12) deserves further comment about the Lewis Center’s inefficient use of energy.
The following information is not new. It was made available to the environmental studies’ Paige Wiegman, to President Dye and was published in an earlier letter of mine to the Review. It derives from my own studies as well as from those of John Scofield. Although the information is old, there are many first-year and second-year students who haven’t been informed.
The generation of electrical energy from the burning of coal is an inefficient process. The electrical energy produced from a ton of coal is about one-third of the heat energy available from the coal. The electrical energy used by the Lewis Center is generated by the largely coal-fired Ohio generating plants. That electrical energy is transmitted (with concomitant line-loss) to Oberlin where it is converted back to heat energy for use in the Lewis Center.
There is an alternative process that would cause the use of much less and much lower emissions of pollutants. That process would take advantage of the insulated steam lines already installed to the Lewis Center. By using the heat energy directly from the College heating plant — without the conversions from heat energy to electrical energy and back to heat for the building — the Lewis Center would be responsible for only about one-third of the coal combustion that is now used to heat the building. Those responsible for the selection of electrical energy to heat a “model” green building need to explain that decision.
A separate, related subject worth discussing is the progress that the Lewis Center is making toward energy self-sufficiency. Past use of electrical energy by the building has been at a rate of about 200,000 Kilowatt-hours per year (see John Scofield’s web page for the data.) A building in Santa Monica, California (slightly sunnier than Oberlin) with a slightly larger array than that on the Lewis Center generates about 40,000 Kilowatt-hours per year — ONE-FIFTH of the Lewis Center’s historical use. The Santa Monica array uses modules from the same manufacturer and (unlike that of the Lewis Center) is flat and tilted to the optimum angle for receiving solar energy.
These facts encourage me to offer the following bet. Each year, I will pay anyone five cents for every Kilowatt-hour exported that year by the Lewis Center. To take advantage of this offer, any takers must pay me five cents for every Kilowatt-hour that the Lewis Center imports in the same year. Any takers?

–David C. Greene
OC ’49