Plant History

Up until the early 1960's the heating plant was located on the corner of South 7th Street and Connor Street (now M.P. Daniel). The original Physical Plant contained a boiler with a large smokestack used to make steam in order to provide building heat through steam converters. The building was later named Neill Morris Hall after one of Baylor's first Physical Plant Directors. The steam was and still is carried by underground piping systems to the buildings that are connected to the campus steam & condensate loop systems. It should also be noted that up until this time each building had separate water chiller units for providing building cooling water, or no indoor cooling at all.

It was in September of 1962 Baylor committed to the construction of a central campus generation plant for all of the existing and future building needs would be generated and distributed in regards to heating and cooling. The plant contained two new natural gas fired boilers for heating and three new water chillers for cooling. The steam and chilled water would be distributed across campus in underground direct buried or utility tunnel piping. In the later months of 1962 the Temperature Control Center entered into a utility tunnel project that would connect the plant with the newest girls dorm known as Russell Hall.

As the campus grew in the earlier 1970's with new buildings and students the steam and chilled water demands increased, thus resulting in a plant expansion project. The project included the increased capacity of the plant boilers and the cooling towers to meets these demands.

It was in 1987 Baylor committed to a Cogeneration project that meant that the campus' central plant would be able to generate 4megawatts of electricity with a natural gas fired turbine/generator. The Cogeneration unit would allow the plant to use the by-product heat for additional steam needs as well as the operation of absorption chillers for cooling. During this project the plant's natural gas turbine and back-up boiler was equipped to operate on #2 diesel oil as a secondary fuel source.

In 1989 the plant constructed a new water chemical treatment addition to the building allowing the plant to properly treat the chilled water and steam looped systems across campus as well as within the plant. The new chemical building and program provides the plant with an isolated facility to store, test and administrate the proper amount of chemicals in a safe manner.

During the year of 1998 Baylor committed to a campus wide Energy Conservation Performance project, which included the central plant being retrofitted with newer energy efficient electrical chillers, automated valve controls, a newly constructed variable speed drive controllers (VFD) to be used on pumps and cooling tower fans. The project also included the latest high tech computerized Siemens Energy Management System to control the plant's equipment, as well as the campus facilities' equipment as one system. The project included the renovation of the two large separate cooling tower cells.

In 1999 the plant's Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) had to have the steam pressure per hour increased from 50,000pph to a 70,000pph in order to handle the increased steam loads for the campus' new construction projects.

Late in the year 2000 the plant known as the Temperature Control Center was re-named as the Baylor Energy Complex, and became a major part of Baylor University's "Vision 2012 Master Plan". It was in this campus Master Plan that the University became committed to a total campus utility infrastructure plan pertaining to mechanical, electrical, and plumbing needs of the present and future.

As part of the Vision 2012 that includes the Utility Infrastructure Plan, the Energy Complex installed a new 2700ton chiller unit in mid 2003. This chiller's purpose was to meet the cooling demands of the University's newly built 130,000sqft Law School, 500,000sqft Science Building and 145,000sqft Museum of Natural Sciences facilities, which are very climate sensitive.