(upbeat music)
- [Marc] Climate change is the defining issue of our time.
At Stanford, we're committed to doing our part
to help ensure the sustainability of our planet
and human life.
Both through our mission of teaching and research,
and through our campus operations.
(upbeat music)
SESI reduces our greenhouse gas emissions,
while meeting the university's energy needs.
It's also a wonderful resource
for hands-on education and research
for Stanford students and faculty.
- SESI is an illustration of how Stanford
is walking the walk.
SESI reduces Stanford's greenhouse gas emissions by 68%,
more than two thirds from peak levels.
With 122 megawatts of utility scale
and onsite solar capacity,
plus both electric and thermal storage,
Stanford produces enough clean, renewable electricity
each year to equal
the university's annual electricity consumption.
- Stanford Energy Systems Innovations
represents a transformation of university energy supply
from a 100% fossil fuel-based combined heat and power plant,
to a fully electric
and highly efficient heat recovery system.
The vision and implementation of SESI
would not have been possible without Joe Stagner
and the university administration support at that time.
Joe Stagner and our team had discovered
that the campus has a 70% real time overlap
of heating and cooling demands.
This concept was key to our success,
and is highly transferable and scalable.
The elements of SESI include a Central Energy Facility,
the CEF, that utilizes heat recovery,
and both thermal and electric storage to maximize efficiency
in the university's heating and cooling systems.
We also have direct access to the grid,
meaning that we are our own energy service provider.
We also have a new hot water distribution system
that replaced the steam system,
and involved installing more than 20 miles
of underground pipe across campus.
We updated mechanical systems of 155 buildings
to receive hot water.
And very importantly,
we have Model Predictive Control software,
that by itself, increases efficiency
of our entire system by 6%.
Because of SESI, we can select the time of day
to use our energy and work with the California grid,
and more accurately forecast our load
to better manage our energy needs.
The heat recovery system meets 90%
of the heating load on campus with waste heat,
and reduces total campus water consumption by 18%.
- When SESI was designed,
Stanford needed to replace the aging cogeneration plant.
And the initial capital investment for the SESI project
was $485 million.
SESI provided the lowest life cycle cost
and environmental impact of all the options,
and was forecast to save the university
more than $520 million over time.
It's on track to realize even greater savings
than originally forecast.
SESI helps to illustrate how it is possible
to employ a cost effective solution
that helps the bottom line of an organization,
and that it is possible to scale these innovations
and apply them to any size.
In fact, Stanford's Redwood City campus
features a smaller scale, even more efficient version
of the Central Energy Facility,
which demonstrates to other campuses and cities,
the transportability of the systems and technology of SESI.
- At an institution like Stanford with immense resources,
students have access not only to expertise,
but also to opportunities for hands-on experience
and applied learning.
I would recommend that my fellow students
approach the campus as a living lab
to venture outside of their comfort zones
and their departments
and engage in the interdisciplinary interactions
and collaborations,
both inside and outside of the classroom.
They can work hand-in-hand with faculty and staff,
who are pioneering experts in their respective fields,
while also applying theory to real projects, like SESI.
- SESI is a great example of how sustainable innovation
on campus can be a model for the broader world.
Through the program, we aim to demonstrate how campuses,
institutions and even cities, can innovate to contribute
to a thriving future for humanity.
(upbeat music)