Combining Cornell’s lake setting with the scenario Peer paints sets a perfect stage for my mission: to explore the new Cornell Lake Source Cooling (LSC) project, which uses cold water from the depths of Cayuga Lake to cool buildings on campus. This novel system ranks as the first in the world to use deep lake water as a year-round cooling medium, and it saves tremendous amounts of electrical energy and associated pollution. Yet with all its benefits, it took a monumental effort by myriad engineers and scientists to determine its environmental impacts, develop techniques and designs to allay concerns, satisfy stakeholders, and get the project built.
It all starts with the Cornell University chilled water system, which dates back to 1963 and after upgrades over the years, had come to consist of three chilled water plants with eight electric-motor-driven chillers and a 4.4-million-gallon thermal storage tank. All three plants pump into a common underground network consisting of over 10 miles of piping. The Cornell district cooling system operates year round, and it previously delivered more than 16,000 tons of cooling capacity at peak demand and 2,000 tons in winter. It supplies cooling for research processes as well as for general air conditioning of laboratory space, computer rooms, teaching areas, and common spaces. The system serves 75 buildings totaling over four million square feet of air conditioned space, about 40 percent of the core campus.