The Daily Princetonian
Summary
Have you ever wondered what chickens talk about? Edward “Ted” Borer has, and through the careful study of his own backyard hens, he has pinned down three words in chicken: a calm good morning cluck, a past-tense verb for having laid an egg, and an alarming squawk that means trouble. As a dedicated gardener and chicken-caretaker, Borer placed a quote by the Dalai Lama above his coop, as well as a Tibetan prayer flag and a federal cross, to playfully encourage peace and compassion among the rowdy flock. He also keeps a live camera trained on the coop. “I’m an engineer,” he said, “What did you expect?”
Borer is not just any engineer. Until recently, he was Princeton’s own Energy Plant Director, overseeing the Princeton Energy Plant, and more recently, the two new geo-exchange facilities: the Thermally Integrated Geo-Exchange Resource (TIGER) and Central Utility Building (CUB). After 30 years of stewarding Princeton’s energy, Borer retired on Jan. 3 and is now embarking on a new chapter of his life as a part-time private energy consultant. David Weis, who started working as a contractor at the Energy Plant in 2005 and officially joined the Princeton staff as an Energy Plant Controls Engineer in 2023, recently stepped into the director role.
Borer was a project manager for the construction of the cogeneration plant, which has been heating and cooling campus through the combustion of natural gas since 1996. Since then, he has seen Princeton through the early stages of its transition to geo-exchange. This will become the University’s primary energy system over the course of the next decade, and according to Borer, it already powers around 17 percent of campus buildings — much more efficiently than the cogeneration system.
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