Legislators consider summer boilers, fuel conversion to stabilize steam for Randolph campus lab

Sharon Scott, chief financial and operating officer for the Vermont State Colleges System, told the Corrections & Institutions Committee on Feb. 27 that the Randolph campus heating plant has been providing steam to the state Environmental and Agricultural Laboratory (the Vail Lab) under a temporary arrangement that is stressing the college’s boilers and producing inconsistent pressures for laboratory work.

That temporary arrangement began after the Vail Lab project and its planned standalone biomass plant were delayed. "Each year we go through a process to identify exactly how much steam the Vail Building is using proportional to the total amount of steam that's being produced out of our plant," Scott said. She added that in the most recently completed fiscal year the Vail Building accounted for 17.2% of all steam produced at the plant.

The committee heard that the current pattern — running boilers in summer to supply Vail and short-cycling them for the campus — reduces equipment life and does not reliably deliver…