Energy Services
November 11, 2005
by Tom O'Keefe

For many universities, much of their infrastructure is out of sight (and out of mind), buried underground: electrical wires, chilled water pipes, drinking water pipes, waste water pipes, steam pipes, telephone lines, cable lines, and fiber optic lines at UNC are all under foot. Energy Services and Facilities Services, units of Campus Services, are responsible respectively for the supply side (production) and the demand side (distribution) of provision of heating, cooling, and electricity to the University. The university’s ability produce and distribute almost 1/3 of the energy needed to run the campus allows it to function in a relatively normal fashion and to provide critical health care, housing, and food services to the broader community during crises (such as Hurricane Fran in 1996 or the Ice Storm in 2002). One need look only as far as the OWASA debacle in the aftermath of Hurricane Fran, when damage to key pumps combined with inadequate contingency planning for emergencies left the community without clean tap water and unable to flush their toilets (without channeling waste water directly into streams), to understand the importance of well-functioning and emergency-prepared utilities. For UNC, the remaining two-thirds of required energy is purchased from Duke Power at a total annual cost exceeding $50 million.

The control room for EMCS is located in the Giles Horney building. Through a presentation, Ralph Taylor, University Energy Manager, and his professional staff showed the class the monitoring and control capacity of several facilities by building and floor. Students were surprised to learn that in terms of emergency power, research animal facilities are a higher University priority than residence halls, classrooms, and offices during a power crisis because the potential consequences of losing power in a research lab might mean years of lost work on medical research.

EMCS has been working to upgrade their information technology systems to allow more seamless collaboration between operators in the control room and HVAC technicians in the field. In the past, the only computers on which streaming campus energy information was available were those in the control room, but soon technicians in the field will have access to that same information.

The Environmental Protection Agency and US Department of Energy have honored UNC's Steam Cogeneration Facility for an exemplary cogeneration project which advances the nation’s goal of electric generation efficiency. Carolina was among the forerunners in applying such cogeneration technology (which simultaneously generates electricity and steam, the latter used for heating, sterilization of lab equipment and in various other contexts) in the United States (the technology was originally Finnish). The Cogen Plant, which went into operation in the early 1990s, achieves 60-70% efficiency on the fuel it burns (mostly coal) as opposed to the 36% efficiency achieved by most standard power plants, including those of Duke Power. For all EPA pollution indices (SOX, NOX, opacity…), the Cogen Plant’s outputs are well below the allowed standards.

The University owned the electric, water, telephone, and sewer services until the mid-1970's when the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) was created to purchase the assets and begin running services for the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

The Cogen Plant stands on property zoned residential, and it operates under a Special Use Permit issued by the Chapel Hill Town Council. Plant managers are currently seeking Town approval to upgrade the Plant’s generation capacity and to build diesel generators which would allow the plant to restart energy production in case Duke Power and Cogen simultaneously went down (as could happen in a severe hurricane). More information about the connection between the Cogen facility and the Town of Chapel Hill can be found under Campus Planning and Development on the Carolina and the Community webpage.

The last stop on the lab was the Chilled Water Plant on south campus not far from Odom Village. It is at this plant that the majority of the campus’ chilled water, which is used in air conditioning systems, is generated. The facility can be seen as analogous to a standard refrigerator on a much larger scale. By generating most of its chilled water at a single site, the university avoids the problem of widespread noise pollution that is experienced by campuses where each building has its own chiller. A massive cylindrical Thermal Storage Unit is nearing completion not far from the plant, and other efforts are underway to expand Carolina’s chilled water capacity to accommodate the ever expanding physical plant (currently 14 million square feet of floor space, but predicted to increase to 20 million in the coming years).

The final heat sink for the Plant is the chiller tower, and the story of its construction and design is illustrative in considering university-town relations. The Plant borders a quiet affluent neighborhood located just south of the campus. A typical chiller tower is tall, long, and narrow with vents on both sides to allow the dissipation of heat from the water passing through. However, in response to residents’ concerns and strict town noise ordinances (which allow consistent noise no louder than 45 decibels) the Plant’s chiller tower only has vents on the side facing away from the neighborhood; the triumphant sound on the backside of the tower could easily be mistaking for a soothing babbling brook, and there have not been noise complaints since the towers construction.