Oregon State University Kelley Engineering Center District Utility Plant

From Building Plant to Campus Resource

The Kelley Engineering Center (KEC) design project transformed a single-building setup into a District Utility Plant (DUP) capable of serving multiple buildings on campus including KEC, Johnson Hall, and the new Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaboration Innovation Complex (HCIC), with room to grow further. The finished plant holds three 600-ton Daikin Maglev chillers totaling 1,800 tons of cooling capacity, a York heat recovery chiller that delivers cooling and heating at the same time, two steam-to-water heat exchangers, and over 4,100 gallons of thermal storage. Our work on the North DUP  gave the KEC project a running start and set the tone for how the whole team worked together over the following three and a half years. SWE served as the prime engineer on the project, leading the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design.

A Project That Had to Adapt

This particular project did not follow a straight line. The project started as a conventional design-bid-build and gradually shifted into something closer to a design-build process, mainly because the industry was mid-transition on refrigerants for chillers. If the team waited for the design to be fully complete before ordering equipment, the refrigerant changeover would have pushed the project back by six months or more. Instead, the team moved fast and placed chiller orders well ahead of where the design stood at the time, a new kind of coordination that pushed everyone to think differently about procurement.

Then the existing chillers failed. Before the full plant was ready, the team had to locate and install temporary air-cooled chillers to keep KEC and Johnson Hall running. Server rooms in both buildings needed continuous cooling throughout construction, so the team also worked with controls to shed load from non-critical spaces, redirecting as much chilled water as possible to keep the critical areas safe and online. That kind of reactive problem-solving ran through the whole project.

Built to Last and Expand

The plant was designed with the future in mind at every turn. The chiller room now has room for a fifth chiller. The cooling towers are all interconnected so that water runs through all three towers even when the load only needs one, which maximizes the opportunity for free cooling and keeps the towers working efficiently. The thermal storage tanks let the heat recovery chiller run for longer stretches without cycling on and off, which reduces wear on the compressors and extends equipment life.

Working inside an existing building also pushed the team toward some practical decisions. Stainless steel replaced black steel for a lot of the condenser water and heating water piping, because it was easier for the contractor to install in tight spaces above existing ductwork without having to shut systems down. The cooling towers were lifted onto a steel platform so OSU facilities staff can walk underneath and access the equipment they service most often. Steel beams inside the chiller room give facilities a way to disconnect and swing out heavy components like pump motors without bringing in outside lift equipment.

The results showed up in the energy numbers. The plant saves 850,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, cuts campus steam demand by 1.22 million pounds annually, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 1.56 million pounds per year. Energy Trust of Oregon awarded a $190,000 utility rebate on the project.

This project proved that the right team and an established relationship with a client can carry a project through circumstances nobody planned for.

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