Massachusetts university thermal network
Mapping campus-wide energy demand to create a scalable pathway away from fossil-fuel infrastructure.
The challenge
The university campus relied on centralized fossil-fuel heating and separately operated cooling systems. This meant that buildings could reject heat through cooling while the campus continued to consume fuel for heating. Nearly half of the energy entering the heating system was lost through combustion, distribution and other system inefficiencies. The campus buildings also varied considerably in age, condition, use and energy demand. A single campus-wide conversion could have created unnecessary capacity and required equipment to be replaced before the appropriate capital cycle. The strategy therefore needed to identify where electrification should begin and how it could expand progressively across the campus.
The system approach
URBS mapped annual energy use, peak heating and cooling loads, and available rejected heat at each building. This revealed groups of buildings with complementary demands that could be organized into energy nodes, balancing consumption and reusing thermal energy locally. The first proposed node connects eight academic and residential buildings representing approximately one-quarter of campus energy use. An ambient thermal network links the buildings with heat pumps, heat recovery and thermal storage, allowing energy rejected from cooling and ventilation to serve demand elsewhere within the cluster. The node provides a practical first phase for campus electrification and a repeatable model for future building clusters. Additional nodes can operate independently or connect through a wider campus network as infrastructure is replaced and demand evolves.