House Community Budget Issue Requests - Tracking Id #3087 Advanced Technology Center; Community Colleges Facilities Match
Requester:	Susan Lehr		Organization:		Florida Community College of Jacksonville (FCCJ)
Project Title:	Advanced Technology Center; Community Colleges Facilities Match		Date Submitted:		01/31/2000 10:18:03 PM
District Member:	Stephen Wise		Service Area:		Regional
Counties Affected:	Duval, Nassau
Recipient:	Florida Community College at Jacksonville (FCCJ)		Contact:		Susan Lehr, VP, Government Relations
	501 West State Street		Contact Phone:		(904) 632-3391
	Jacksonville 32202
Project Description:
Florida Community College at Jacksonville (FCCJ) was approved for the construction of an instructional workforce facility known as the Advanced Technology Center (ATC). The project is phased into two parts, the first of which was funded last year. This second phase has a new component - the demonstration of a new solar energy innovation, which brings a significant technological enhancement to the facility. The College would incorporate into the design of the building, a new generation of solar collector materials, which would provide solar power to the facility. This request for matching fund would pay for integrated design, engineering plans to combine Phase I and Phase II, to include the solar energy component as well as some site development. The College is parnering with the Jacksonville Electric Authority ( a publicly owned utility) and a private solar energy company, Energy Laboratories, Inc., to demonstrate a 25 to 100KW solar termal energy pilot system as part of the ATC building. k This solar energy project has been under development for many years, has been successfully tested on smaller models, and is now ready to be demonstrated on a building. (The public/private partnership saves funds for all parties because it consolidates resources and reduces duplication. FCCJ is building the facility anyway, the parnership allows the demonstratino to occur on a public, technology-based education facility. The College will rely on the solar energy to power the entire facility, thereby reducing long term utility costs. The JEA saves money because they are able to enhance the College's planned facility instead of building a facility for the sake of the demonstration. It is anticipated that this technology and conventional electric power generation will be combined to produce a first of its kind solar thermal electric plant. Through innovative controls, collected solar eneragy will be fed into a conventional power generation cycle to produce electricity at conversion efficiencies, from sunlight to electricity, never before commercially obtained. The solar energy will be collected with solar collectors that combine spacecraft heat loss technology with atomic particle accelerator detection methods to result in a solar collector that gets very hot and produces a lot of energy using the Florida sunshine, which is different from desert sunshine. The College believes that this innovation will greatly enhance the ATC. It seems appropriate for the new high tech, workforce training facility to be the first site in the world to use this new solar technology. Demonstration of this advanced technology will draw interest to the ATC from all over the world to "kick the tire" of the first of a new generation of electric power plant. Further, The ATC will be able to boast that it incorporates clean green solar energy into its facility. Finally, The ATC could become the training center for those wanting to enter the new high tech field of solar thermal electricity, which will involve technologies from nano-crystalline selective optical surfaces and solution derived glasses to new thermodynamic power cycle applications.
Services Provided/Benefit to State:
There are five primary benefits: 1-Technology innovation in a workforce training facility 2-Reduction of long term energy costs for a state funded faciltiy 3-Elimination of duplicate funding by public and private partnering and pooling of resources. 4-Attraction of high tech manufacturing companies and high tech jobs to Northeast Florida for solar thermal manufacturing; and 5-The potential for a technology breakthrough for commercial energy production. The Advanced Technology Center is a workforce training facility, which will provide high tech instructional programs leading to those Occupational Forecast List jobs deemed as "critical jobs". The College has been authorized to expand and or development training for nine "critical jobs" which is to be funded from the workforce fund. The College is closing an old, out-of-date facility and moving those programs into the new facility in January 2001. The engineering and design plans for the facility are just now underway, adding this solar thermal power component can be easily integrated at this time. The JEA has committed to achieve 7.5% clean and renewable capacity in the next 15 yrs. This mission requires significant breakthroughs in solar energy conversion technologies and innovative research and engineering to achieve the anticipated 100MW of solar thermal energy needed by 2015. This new solar energy system has been designed to use conventionally available power generation equipment. This lowers the cost of solar power, as much of the system is constructed from off-the-shelf components. All previous utility scale solar power generation efforts have focused on areas of the world that are remotre, hot, and clear - desserts. Their limited applicability has been one of their greatest hindrances. This new technology uses all parts of sunlight - both directly from the sun and from the sunlight scattered by the sky - effectively. It will open up tuility scale solar power for use in areas where people live - like Florida.
Measurable Outcome Anticipated:
FCCJ's workforce funding is performanced-based. This means that after construction of the ATC is omplete, all the instructional programming must produce high wage/high skills workers or the college's operational funds are lost. FCCJ has a tremendous track record in performance incentive funding and is now realigning its workforce program investments to produce the maximum yield of positive outcomes. The community college system has the most aggressive "base funds-at-risk" performance-funding program of all state funded entities. It also has the most sophisticated tracking and reporting mechanisms in the state, which tie directrly into the workforce funding formula. Once this new technology is implemental fully,Forida could realize between $150-600 million in annual utility fuel savings. It would also result in the creation of a new manufacturing and consulting industry built around interfacing solar with conventional utilites, which would result in many new manufacturing and technical jobs along with exports sales to the rest of the USA and outside the US. If the solar thermal project successfully demonstrates the design of a new type of power plant, which is mostly solar and uses very little fossil fuel, then the impact to new power plant construction throughout Florida and the world would be profound. Finally, the reduction in fossil fuel consumption would result in a corresponding reduction NOX, S02, and CO2 pollutants with the associated environmental credits for the Florida Utility Industry.
Amount requested from the State for this project this year:				$1,000,000
Total cost of the project:		$8,000,000

Request has been made to fund:			Operations and Construction
Is there Local Government or Private match for this request?						Yes
	Cash Amount:	$1,000,000		In-Kind Amount:		$500,000
Was this project previously funded by the State?						Yes
	Fiscal Year:	1999		Amount:		$3,000,000
Is future-year funding likely to be requested?						Yes
	Amount:	$3,000,000
	Purpose for future year funding:				YesNon-recurring Construction
	Will this be an annual request?					No
Was this project included in an Agency's Budget Request?						No
Was this project included in the Governor's Recommended Budget?						No
Is there a documented need for this project?						Yes
	Documentation:	PECO Facilities List and CIP-8 Facilities Matching Request
Was this project request heard before a publicly noticed meeting of a body of elected officials (municipal, county, or state)?						Yes
	Hearing Body:	Duval County Legislative Delegaton
	Meeting Date:	11/12/1998