Heating (and cooling?) with Wood in Barron, WI

Dave Miller (Barron Economic Development) and Tim Jergenson (Barron County Ag Agent) and I recently caught up with Monti Halberg, Superintendent of Barron School District, for a look at the innovative heating (and soon to be cooling) systems which the Barron High School and several adjacent buildings utilize. This connected "district" includes a hospital, a medical center, an assisted living center and elementary school. A community center is also set to join the system. It sounds innovative to me but they've been doing it since 1981.

With estimated savings around $100,000/yr in energy costs somebody had alot of foresight. I thought this might be an interesting story for school districts (or other municipalities) around the State to hear about - especially those facing high energy costs and with access to available bio-energy feedstocks like wood. Accoding to Monti around 10-15 other schools are using wood for energy around the State, including Rice Lake, Lake Holcombe, Cornell, and Turtle Lake.

Our first stop on the tour was Bell Timber - a company making poles on the edge of Barron . The School purchases scrap lumber (chip ends) and wood shavings from the company.

The first step in the process is to chip the wood down to size which the school does itself with a large chipper it purchased. A large used truck hauls the chips over to the school building about a mile away. Clearly this ain't as easy as turning the valve on the natural gas. With labor factored in Monti estimates the chips cost $15 per ton or $32/ton if purchased delivered. Shavings are an even better deal at around $8/ton.

So what's next for the school system? They recently completed a Focus on Energy efficiency project. The school district also passed a referendum to expand the project by adding a wood boiler at the middle school and they are poised to become the first school in the State to use an absorption chiller to run air conditioning through the system.

To learn more about district heating visit the District Energy St. Paul website. It turns out our neighbors have the largest such system in North America.