2026 GRC Field Trip: Houston Asia Center & Rice University: A Deep Dive into Geothermal Cooling/Heating
The trip will start with a visit to the Houston Asia Center for an external look at their built-in geothermal cooling/heating system. It will then move to Rice University to look at the complexities of retrofitting cooling/heating into an existing system. With the Rice visit, we will hope to address the hypothetical question: “If Rice were to replace its current heating and cooling system with one driven by geothermal energy, what would it look like? What could be re-used, and what would need to be replaced?” To address that, we will visit the Central and South Plants, the existing heating and chilled water systems, distribution/tunnel infrastructure, and provide an overview of current and future campus loads (and what can be foreseen for the future). We will try to be technology agnostic (deep vs. shallow geothermal; closed vs. open loop, etc.) until we (hopefully) reach an expert consensus conclusion that one technology set makes the most sense based on the desire to keep as much of the existing infrastructure as possible while keeping CAPEX and OPEX down.
Registration:
- $95 per person
Fees include transportation.