PARIS – Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School is now being heated by its $2 million biomass boiler.

The boiler was fired up Thursday, Superintendent Rick Colpitts said. He will lead dignitaries on a private tour of the boiler area Tuesday. The public is invited to view it and other energy saving measures at the school Wednesday.

“It’s going very well,” Colpitts said Monday. The school building will generally only be heated by the backup oil burners in early fall and late spring when the temperature is higher because it is more efficient at those times, he said.

On Tuesday evening, representatives from Siemens Industry, Inc. of Scarborough, which was hired to implement the energy saving programs will attend the private viewing, along with representatives of the furnace manufacturer, local officials and former superintendent Mark Eastman, who spearheaded the boiler project.

The public open house will be held Nov. 16 from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Tours of the four sources of green alternative energy used at the school will start from the rotunda near the gym.

The green projects include a biomass boiler burning wood chips to make heat, solar panels on the roof to heat water for showers and bathrooms, a windmill at the athletic field to supplement electricity and a photovoltaic system to generate energy for water pumps.

School officials say they believe the high school, which houses about 1,100 students, is the only school in the state to utilize all four forms of alternative energy.

The biomass boiler, which is affectionately called the Eastman Veissmann boiler in honor of Eastman who spearheaded the project, was built by the Viessmann Group in Austria. 

It is expected to save the district as much as $129,000 a year in fuel. A previous phase of green improvements exceeded the projected annual savings by $80,000 per year. School officials say all of the alternative energy features can be expanded in the future as necessary.

School officials said the projects will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from traditional fossil fuel power plants by about two million pounds of carbon dioxide per year and help reduce dependence on foreign oil.

In addition to the boiler, solar panels, windmill and photovoltaic power system, the work by Siemens included upgrading of energy control systems, more energy-efficient lighting in the parking lot, and an interactive “green touch screen” computer at the high school to show students, faculty and public what the district is doing to conserve energy. A new ventilation control system has been put in Oxford Hills Middle School that operates based on the number of people in the room or detected carbon monoxide levels.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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