GMP Opens Energy Innovation Center In Rutland

VPR

Novem­ber 20, 2013

By Nina Keck

Green Moun­tain Power’s new $2.75 mil­lion Ener­gy Inno­va­tion Cen­ter opens today in Rut­land.  The facil­i­ty was cre­at­ed out of what had been two blight­ed down­town prop­er­ties and ful­fills one of the key promis­es GMP made to Rut­land when it pur­chased CVPS almost 18 months ago.

Green Moun­tain Pow­er’s Vice Pres­i­dent of Gen­er­a­tion and Ener­gy Inno­va­tion Steve Costel­lo stood in front of the Ener­gy Inno­va­tion Center’s new, revolv­ing glass entry­way.  “We tried to pre­serve as much of the orig­i­nal build­ing as we could so for exam­ple, the ter­ra cot­ta — all this stone on the main build­ing is original.”

Costel­lo says they added some dra­mat­ic new touch­es as well, like the art deco sig­nage com­plete with green neon let­ter­ing, and a spa­cious, muse­um-like area that will be open to the pub­lic even on Saturdays.

“What we hope it will be for the pub­lic is real­ly an inspi­ra­tion space where they can learn about ener­gy, learn about the impacts of their ener­gy choic­es and hope­ful­ly impact how they think about ener­gy ‚” says Costello.

The pub­lic space con­tains 12 col­or­ful, hands-on dis­plays that high­light var­i­ous aspects of solar pow­er, wind pow­er, hydro — and yes, there’s even a sev­en-foot-long ani­ma­tron­ic Hol­stein that’ll chat you up about cow power.

Jim Gib­er­ti, pres­i­dent of the Imag­i­na­tion Com­pa­ny, the Bethel firm that designed and built the cow and oth­er dis­plays, says they spent a lot of time learn­ing about ener­gy before try­ing to get cre­ative. “We sort of approached it walk­ing the line between things that would be edu­ca­tion­al and inter­est­ing for kids to come in and hands on and inter­ac­tive while also being infor­ma­tive for adults,” he says.

“What we hope it will be for the pub­lic is real­ly an inspi­ra­tional space where they can learn about ener­gy, learn about the impacts of their ener­gy choic­es and hope­ful­ly impact how they think about ener­gy.” — Steve Costel­lo, Green Moun­tain Power

While the front third of the 70,000-square-foot build­ing is pub­lic space, Costel­lo says the back end and sec­ond floor will house offices for 30 GMP employees. 

Anoth­er suite of offices will be used by Effi­cien­cy Ver­mont and the non­prof­it hous­ing orga­ni­za­tion Neigh­bor­Works of West­ern Vermont.

There’s also a large glassed in con­fer­ence room that can be used by staff as well as schools and col­leges for lectures.

Walk­ing the length of the ground floor, vis­i­tors can’t help but notice all the nat­ur­al light. Point­ing toward the ceil­ing, Costel­lo says that’s thanks to sev­er­al large sky­lights. An inte­ri­or hall­way and sev­er­al bath­rooms are bright­ened by mir­rored tubes that bring in light from the rooftop.

He says the build­ing itself is meant to be part of the ener­gy exhib­it, show­cas­ing effi­cien­cy in a real set­ting.  “When you look up above you, these blue tubes are called heat socks and they’re con­nect­ed to heat pumps. So we hope to burn no fos­sil fuels to heat this space.”

Up on the roof, you can see those heat pumps, two types of solar arrays and a mini wind tur­bine in action. 

Costel­lo says it’s all about get­ting folks to think about ener­gy — some­thing he says most peo­ple don’t do. “We hope to begin a deep­er dis­cus­sion with cus­tomers and real­ly get them think­ing about how they use it, why they use it and how they can use it more effi­cient­ly.   Every­thing from home heat­ing, light­ing, com­put­ers and elec­tric vehicles.”

Giv­en that Ver­mont has set a goal of get­ting 90 per­cent of its ener­gy from renew­able sources by 2050, Costel­lo says the soon­er the state gets that con­ver­sa­tion going, the better.