“Green” Power

By Jade Boyd

As Rice University plans its centennial celebration for 2012, construction crews already have begun work on one of the cornerstones of the university’s ambitious expansion plan for its second century: a new physical plant that will simultaneously open Rice’s undeveloped southwest campus to future construction while preserving the only remaining example of native biosphere in the Texas Medical Center.

“Construction of new facilities is the most tangible sign of progress on any university campus, and in many ways Rice’s South Utility Plant embodies the principles that underlie Rice’s Vision for the Second Century,” said Barbara White Bryson, associate vice president for Facilities, Engineering and Planning. “We’re on the cusp of a building boom unlike any in Rice’s history. By midsummer, more than $500 million in construction projects were under way.”

Most of the campus growth during the coming century will take place along the north–south axis, a move that reflects Rice’s increasingly close relationship with sister institutions in the Texas Medical Center. The South Utility Plant will set the stage for that growth, Bryson said, and its innovative design will enhance education and research at Rice while preserving one of Houston’s historic natural areas. Rice’s existing physical plant already is operating near capacity and cannot be expanded to supply the amount of chilled water and steam required to heat and cool the new buildings.

Designed by renowned New Mexico-based architect Antoine Predock, the south plant will be located on Main Street about a quarter mile north of University Boulevard. “Our options were limited as to where we could site the new plant,” Bryson said. “Building new steam tunnels is very expensive, so the new facility must be tied to our existing steam tunnels and water pipes. If we’d built this on the far edge of campus, the costs would have been prohibitive.”

The unique facility not only embodies state-of-the-art power generation technology but will be aesthetically pleasing. “Predock’s design shatters a lot of preconceptions that people might have when they think of a physical plant,” said David Rodd, university architect. “For one thing, it’s beautiful. It’ll also be relatively quiet, and in many ways, it will be among the most environmentally sensitive buildings on Rice’s campus.”

Measuring about 220 feet by 70 feet, the building will screen most of the transformers and other heavy external equipment behind walls and an earthen berm. “Sustainability is incorporated at every level in the south plant,” said Rice director of sustainability Richard Johnson. “There are some design features we can incorporate with the initial construction and several others that we’ll be able to add in the future.”

The plant is being constructed of energy-efficient building materials. The roof, for example, most likely will be either a high-albedo “cool roof” or vegetated, which will save energy on heating and cooling costs. The plant incorporates a number of state-of-the-art power generation features such as condensate harvesting, in which condensate from air-handling units at the nearby Collaborative Research Center will be piped back in for use in the cooling towers rather than being discharged into city storm sewers. Conditioned spaces in the plant will be cooled and heated by a geothermal heat pump, which transfers heat from the building to the soil on hot days and from the soil to the building on cold days. The plant will be integrated into Rice’s world-class system for modeling and monitoring energy consumption.

“Predock’s design shatters a lot of preconceptions that people might have when they think of a physical plant. For one thing, it’s beautiful. It’ll also be relatively quiet, and, in many ways, it will be among the most environmentally sensitive buildings on Rice’s campus.” 

-David Rodd

Possible elements for the future include a stack cladded with photovoltaic solar panels to generate power that would feed directly into the Rice grid, using fuel cells to supplement energy production or provide uninterrupted power to nearby buildings and installing wind turbines that take advantage of air currents near the plant’s cooling towers or created by the “canyon effect” winds from the nearby Texas Medical Center. Another possibility is arraying a large number of elevated photovoltaic panels over parking lots to provide shade as well as gather clean electrical power.

The south plant design already exceeds goals for federal and regional air emission reduction, but Rice will continue to work with the city of Houston and with industry to pursue and test innovative technologies to further reduce emissions, Bryson said.

The plant also will serve as a learning environment for Rice students, who will be able to see into the control room where state-of-the-art energy modeling and monitoring software will reduce building energy use. In addition, the site is adjacent to the Harris Gully Natural Area, a favorite teaching venue for faculty in Rice’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Bryson said Predock recognized the design challenge as an opportunity to preserve the area for future generations of students and Houstonians.