It has been four years since Microsoft’s Redmond campus modernization project began, and it is nearing completion. This massive 72-acre rebuild incorporates numerous designs and features aimed at environmental sustainability, with none more remarkable than the Geothermal Energy Center (TEC).
The centerpiece of the project is a 6.5-acre geothermal well field, comprising approximately 900 boreholes drilled up to 550 feet deep. Completed last year, this field is expected to fulfill 50% of the campus’s heating and cooling needs without producing carbon emissions.
Despite challenges such as an unmapped subsurface environment and the presence of past construction debris and natural obstacles, GLY Construction, which managed the drilling efforts, completed all work under budget and on schedule.
This achievement was made possible by an innovative approach involving virtual design and construction, which included a highly detailed 3D model of the components and the job site accurate to within 256ths of an inch.
The closed-loop geothermal heating and cooling system operates by sending either cool or warm water to exchange energy with the deep earth. Its refrigeration capacity is so substantial that it could cool the equivalent of 3,000 homes during the summer months.
“The TEC’s heating capacity is 28 million Btus per hour,” reports Engineering News Record, who nominated the TEC as Project of the Year.
“Its nine chillers can provide 9,000 tons of refrigeration. The system is sized to serve 3 million square feet of office and amenity space in 17 new buildings, four of which are not yet built.”
The well field is surrounded by 2.5 miles of walking and bike trails, along with a multi-purpose field for softball and other sports, a cricket pitch, and basketball courts.
Giant 28,000-gallon water tanks, with four for hot water and three for cold, store the water used in the geothermal system. This water is exchanged in the piping below the Earth, with its temperature used to heat or cool the campus before being returned to either cool off or heat up again.
The entire system operates on renewable energy, ensuring that the small amount of electricity required to power the heat exchanger comes with zero emissions.
The Redmond East campus, encompassing 6.7 million square feet of renovations, incorporates numerous carbon-lowering features, including an all-electric kitchen space and the construction of cisterns to capture 200,000 gallons of rainwater.
Through the construction process, Microsoft and its contractors diverted 95% of demolition waste from landfills and reduced the embodied carbon in building materials by at least 30%.
“I’ve been in construction my entire 40-plus-year career and have never done a project that has such a commitment to the environment like the Thermal Energy Center,” says Green, building systems director of OAC, a project management firm who represented Microsoft during the build.
Watch this campus develop right before your very eyes in the video below:
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