Avon approves experimental all-electric public works building
Town may be first in state to use electricity to heat this type of building, making it difficult to estimate exact cost
Zoe Goldstein/Vail Daily
Avon will be building an all-electric public works facility after initially approving plans to heat the facility with natural gas in May. It may be the first of its kind in the state.
“We still haven’t identified another all-electric garage facility like this to even do an apples-to-apples real comparison,” said Eric Heil, Avon town manager, during the Aug. 27 Avon Town Council meeting.
Background on the all-electric public works facility
On May 28, the council reviewed a proposal for a new heating plan for its new public works garage, an 8,000-square-foot, five-bay garage that will house some of the town’s snow removal and maintenance vehicles. In winter, the facility’s garage doors will be opening and closing all day, making the building more expensive and complicated to heat than a standard residential or business building.
At the time, the council was presented with two options for powering the facility’s in-floor heating system: either a high-efficiency natural gas boiler, or an electric boiler. While the cost of installing the two boilers was estimated to be roughly the same — around $4 million — the utility bills on the electric boiler were estimated to be five times those of the natural gas boiler, coming in at $75,000 per year.
During the meeting, town staff emphasized that the difference in heating cost was dramatic but offered the council the choice between the two options.
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In April, the council passed updates to the town’s Exterior Energy Offset Program, raising standards for private businesses and homeowners to make their new outdoor heating systems renewable. The amendments were aimed at moving the town toward its climate action goal of reducing its carbon emissions by 50% from 2016 numbers by 2030, and by 80% by 2050.
During the May public works garage hearing, council members asked staff to remain consistent with the town’s standards for residents and businesses by making the building all-electric.
Council passed the building proposal in May approving the natural gas option, but asked staff to continue to look into the electric heating option.
On Aug. 27, following a presentation by Heil, the council voted to switch the project’s construction from natural gas to all-electric.
“We heard from council loud and clear that you didn’t feel the most comfortable not going all-electric as a public entity and setting the precedents,” Heil said.
Avon willing to accommodate a revised cost estimate
The challenge in estimating the potential cost of the electric boiler’s utility bills lies in that the project is relatively innovative; there are currently very few — or no — similar facilities that are heated with all-electric heating.
To achieve a better approximate estimate of the cost of heating the facility with electricity, Avon looked at the town of Vail’s outdoor snowmelt system, which is entirely electric-powered. However, the snowmelt is an imperfect comparison, as it is entirely outside, whereas the public works facility will technically be indoors despite the frequent opening of garage doors.
The August estimate puts the annual utility bills of the electric boiler at around $37,500 per year, or roughly 1.5 to 2.5 times that of the natural gas boiler.
“I think we’re going to learn and the only way we’re going to learn is by doing, but it doesn’t appear that it’s going to be $300,000 cost over a five-year period, it’s going to be more like a little north of $100,000, and so I think that’s something more affordable,” Heil said.
The biggest risk to the town, Heil said, is that the utility bills wind up being higher than estimated. “We’re doing our best, but it’s not science. We’re trying to extrapolate others’ experience and take our best guess at what might happen at this building,” he said.
Town Council, members of the public speak in favor of taking risk for climate leadership
Though Avon absorbs some risk by taking the lead on such a project, council members, town staff and members of the public who spoke at the meeting were clear that being at the forefront of the field should be one of Avon’s priorities.
“We really need to keep with what we’ve been doing, and we’re spearheading the climate consciousness in this county, I think,” said Council member Ruth Stanley.
“It is actually helping to develop the workforce and the expertise that can replicate this work in other places,” said Sarah Smith Hymes, the town’s former mayor. “If we go forward with something that hasn’t been done somewhere else, it actually helps add to the body of knowledge and expertise and the workforce, which is part of a big problem with some of these projects.”
Kim Schlaepfer, Avon resident and managing director of climate mitigation and resiliency planning with Lotus Engineering, called the all-electric public works facility a “massive opportunity … as far as addressing climate change and reducing local pollution, and securing that carbon-free future for our community that we know we need.”
“It has been proven time and time again that natural gas is no longer needed to power our homes and our buildings, and there are case studies across Eagle County and our surrounding regions of buildings that have gone all-electric in a cost-effective way, many of which are in the town of Avon itself,” Schlaepfer said. “I think a facility integrated with PV (photovoltaic) and battery storage in the future is a really awesome opportunity for the town to lead by example and demonstrate to the community that you guys are walking the talk.”
The town is looking into strategies for capturing and storing a renewable energy source for heating the facility through photovoltaic cells, like solar panels. At the moment, Holy Cross Energy has limits on how much renewable energy the company will purchase, so it does not help the town to install photovoltaic cells without a way to store the energy.
For this process, the town is enlisting consultants to conduct “a campus-wide, full evaluation,” Heil said. “We want to look at maximizing photovoltaics and pairing that with the right size battery. With the little bit I’ve learned, I think that ends up being about a $2 million project … I think there’s a lot of merit in thinking big.”
