The Iowa Board of Regents has approved planning of a new $75 million power plant to serve the needs of the University of Iowa campus. The West Campus Energy Plant will provide critical steam for heating, cooling, and sterilization to buildings on the west side of campus and provide energy security for all UI campus facilities in the event of flood, grid failure, or other adverse event. The new plant will likely take two years to construct and will be operational in four years.
Benefits of new West Campus Energy Plant:
Serves critical research and health care facilities on the west side of campus
Provides resiliency and energy security on both sides of campus in the midst of historic campus transformation and in case of flood, grid failure or other adverse event
Promotes diversification of fuel with built-in and future accommodations for alternative fuels
Replaces two failing natural gas boilers with one, more energy efficient, natural gas boiler
To be built as a co-generation plant – a much more energy efficient use of fuel where a single fuel source produces both electricity and steam
Master planned to take over capacity of boilers at the main Power Plant once they reach the end of their useful life and are decommissioned.
Glen Mowery, director of Utilities and Energy Management, says, “The University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics, research and residential services require continuous, uninterrupted supplies of steam. The new plant will not only ensure continuity of services to our most critical health and research facilities, but also provide back-up service to both sides of campus while providing the most flexibility in fuel sources.”
Buildings on the west side of campus, including the recently completed Pappajohn Biomedical Research Building and the in-construction UI Children’s Hospital, rely heavily on the UI’s main Power Plant, which is built to capacity and is, at times, vulnerable to flooding. Two temporary natural gas boilers currently in use on the west campus to help meet steam demand are at the end of their useful life and will be replaced with a larger, more energy efficient, natural gas boiler that will have the ability to be converted to use alternative fuels.
The new West Campus Energy Plant site plan includes space for potential rail and truck lines that could directly supply biomass fuel to the plant along with space to accommodate biomass material handling facilities; a limitation with the UI’s main Power Plant located along the Iowa River. The long-term vision for the utility infrastructure at the UI includes built-in support for the continued use and expansion of biomass fuels, including the perennial fuel crop Miscanthus, oat hulls, and wood chips.
“While we are pleased to be meeting our energy reduction goals on campus, we need to build in resiliency by replacing failing boilers that were rented following the 2008 flood and to make sure our campus operation is not put at risk during extreme cold weather conditions such as that experienced this winter,” says Don Guckert, associate vice president and director of Facilities Management. “This new plant also addresses the vulnerability for flooding at the main plant, which was idled for five months in 2008.”
In addition to modernizing its utilities infrastructure to create energy security, fuel flexibility and additional pathways to green energy, the UI has made great strides on its 2020 goal to hold total annual energy consumption in check through energy conservation efforts across campus, despite an unprecedented decade of growth. The Pappajohn Biomedical Discovery Building is the latest of seven new buildings to open in the last five years without increasing the UI’s annual energy consumption above the 2010 benchmark.