Due to increasing infrastructure from Wessel Hall and Moody Coliseum as well as aging machinery, crews are adding chillers and boilers to the central utility plant. The machinery produces chill and hot water that supplies the majority of the air conditioning and heating on campus. With the bulk of the work being done now, the projected finish date is in two years.
Corey Ruff, associate vice president for operations, said the central utility plant should be able to get about 10 degrees of energy out of the water while it makes its loop around campus.
“With some of those expansions, we felt a need since campus is growing, that we needed to have additional hot and chill water to supply to the buildings,” Ruff said. “The current capacity of the central plant can produce about 4,000 tons of cooling. Once we’re finished with these upgrades, we’ll be able to produce 7,000 tons.”
The goal is to start replacing the chillers within the next month or two and have the system fully functioning before it gets warm. Around March or April, the plan is to switch construction efforts to the boilers since there won’t be as much demand for heating. If it gets warm too quickly, temporary chillers will be brought in. With temperatures in the 80’s this week, plans were in place to bring in two temporary chillers on Monday.
“We know that with some of these temperature swings, sometimes it can cause some buildings to become uncomfortable,” Ruff said. “We take advantage in the mornings when it’s a little bit cooler of what we call ‘free cooling,’ just bringing in 100% outside air to cool down some of those spaces.”
Ruff and his staff regularly adjust internal climates depending on the campus schedule and outside temperatures. A building automation system called Automated Logic is used to monitor, control and run trends. An energy specialist pays special attention to events and scheduling while maintaining a relationship with the business managers across campus who share information regarding events with them.
Amy McAlister, administrative assistant for the athletics department, said rooms can get hot at times but Moody will get by with floor fans and open doors.
“We are excited about the new chillers and boilers,” McAlister said. “Since our basketball teams are in season, having the chillers off at this time is not ideal, however, we are very fortunate that temperatures outside are not extreme.”
With these enhancements being built, there should be a redundancy that allows normal operations to continue even if one chiller or boiler has to come offline. Ruff said one of the biggest blessings of working at ACU is the gracious and kind behavior of the campus when machines do have to come offline.
“Our ultimate goal is to provide a place where students can be successful and faculty and staff can be successful in carrying out the mission of ACU and so the least disruption we can have on campus the better off that is,” Ruff said. “Construction is just invasive, and that’s just the nature of the beast sometimes.”
