93.9 The Eagle – The News and Talk of Columbia, MO
The University of Missouri is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Mizzou’s massive Combined Cooling Heat and Power Plant (CCHP). It’s located near Columbia’s Providence and East Stewart road.
Mizzou energy management director Michael O’Connor tells reporters that 100 years is a huge accomplishment.
“The Combined Cooling Heat and Power Plant has been supplying the energy services to the University for over 100 years from this location. Supporting the academic mission, the research mission and the health care missions from the campus,” O’Connor says.
The CCHP powers 242 buildings, including MU Health Care, the Mizzou Research Reactor, Memorial Stadium and Mizzou Arena. It provides steam, electricity, drinking water and chilled water. Mr. O’Connor describes the CCHP as unique.
“The campus doesn’t have a chiller for air conditioning or a boiler in every building for heating. So it’s all produced here at a much larger more efficient scale and distributed out to each individual building on campus,” says O’Connor.
The CCHP provides steam, electricity, chilled water and utility distribution for 16-million gross square feet of facilities. It’s located near Columbia’s Providence and East Stewart intersection. O’Connor says the award-winning facility has about 100 employees.
“Not only do they operate the combined cooling heating systems but they do building automation, energy conservation. They control the end-use of the energy that we produce here, as well as the production on this side,” O’Connor says.
The plant opened on January 3, 1923. Mizzou recently held a media event to mark the 100th anniversary, where reporters toured the massive facility wearing hard hats and protective eyewear.
Mr. O’Connor notes the history of energy innovation at Mizzou started in 1882, when Thomas Edison gifted then-Mizzou President Samuel Laws an electric dynamo and some incandescent lamps.
