Central Plant Powers Up

December 5, 2007

Carol Schlueter
cjs@tulane.edu

The Central Plant building may have an unglamorous name, but it will be the center of attention on the uptown campus on Friday (Dec. 7) as Tulane University celebrates an expanded and more efficient facility for power, heating and cooling services.

At a 10 a.m. event on Friday, visitors can tour the building, enjoy refreshments and door prizes, and learn about campuswide energy efficiency efforts.

More than 40 campus facilities are served by the new Central Plant structure, located at 1301 Audubon St. at the corner of Plum Street and called “the heart of the campus” by Tulane facilities services administrators. They have been planning the new building for more than three years.

The services that the Central Plant provides “actually impact the entire campus,” says J. P. Hymel, account manager for Johnson Controls, which handled the design and construction project.

“We’re pretty happy about it,” says Larry Smith, director of architectural and engineering services at Tulane and project manager for the work. “It’s accommodating all the additional needs we have for cooling and heating. It gives us a lot better system, much improved.”

The new facility adds 4,500 tons of cooling capacity that at the same time is 20 to 30 percent more efficient than the previous equipment.

The upgrade fills a pressing need to take care of growing campus utility requirements because of the Wall Residential College and the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life, which both opened in 2006. The Central Plant also will be able to handle a proposed new residence hall, Smith adds.

In addition to equipment with increased capacity, the Central Plant building itself has been raised and is constructed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, Smith says, with a built-in “safe house”— an operations center for key personnel in the event of an emergency. With storm protection in mind, electrical gear that was damaged in rising water after Katrina has been raised to a higher level.

Sylvester Johnson, associate vice president of facilities, adds, “If we have another (Katrina-like) event, we’ll be able to operate out of the Central Plant, the heart of the university for operations.”

Friday’s event is also a way to celebrate a host of campus energy improvements, from the replacement of 4,000 light fixtures in eight residence halls, to improvements in the steam system, addition of water conservation devices and other measures completed by Johnson Controls.

In the end, the combined programs will mean significant utility savings for Tulane, important reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and the savings of about 20 million gallons of water per year.

“Many of the changes are not visible, they are changes to equipment that we don’t see and think about, but they are significant,“ says Liz Davey, environmental coordinator in the Office of Environmental Affairs at Tulane.