Utilities
Chilled Water Plants: Building Connection Basis of Design
McCracken Power Plant - Quick Facts
FOD Utilities provides utility services – steam and condensate, heating hot water, electricity, natural gas, domestic cold and hot water, chilled water, compressed air and fire hydrants – necessary to maintain university operations. This unit is led by Senior Director Ross Parkman.
Utility services are produced and delivered to customers by an extensive utility infrastructure system that is undergoing significant renewal, upgrade, and expansion as part of the Infrastructure Master Plan. Utilities' activities focus on maintaining reliable utilities, ensuring appropriate project designs and installations, minimizing construction impacts and maximizing efforts to facilitate University business throughout construction, renewal, and expansion activities.
FOD Services | For information about requesting a project, accessing services or vendor resources
Utilities Organizational Chart
Contact | 614-292-3428
FY12 Utilities Goals Report | 10-12
Campus Utility Directors Tackle Carbon Emissions, Sustainability | 9-12
Utility Reliability Indicators | 8-12
The following services support the university’s Utilities system:
UTILITIES ENGINEERING
- technical support to maintain 99.9% utility service reliability
- utility system planning for the Infrastructure Master Plan
- system modeling for capacity evaluation and growth studies
- campus distribution and energy conversion system optimization
- critical review of utilities aspects of new construction
- campus power plant controls, district heating plants and district cooling plants
- specialized technical consulting on utility system equipment, steam piping, electrical systems safety, process communication and controls
POWER PLANT OPERATIONS
- operation of 5 central plant boilers and 10 central plant chillers
- central steam and/or hot water to 80 percent of the Columbus campus. This includes most of the main campus and all of the midwest campus, including the Schottenstein Center
- central chilled water for air conditioning in 32 buildings in the central campus area, including RPAC and the College of Business
- compressed air to buildings on the main campus for laboratories and pneumatic controls
- recent investments in new boilers and chillers have improved energy efficiency and dramatically reduced smokestack emissions
UTILITIES SUPPORT SERVICES
- maintains an extensive system of underground utility tunnels
- construction and maintenance outage coordination and planning support
- is licensed to provide emergency removal of asbestos-containing materials. Contact Brian Swaney, 614-292-6601, for asbestos work.
ELECTRICAL SERVICES
- Ohio State and Smith Substation operation and circuit switching
- electrical energy services to campus buildings
- medium and high voltage system maintenance and repair, including building transformers
- Power Plant electrical system repair and maintenance
- provides 99.9% electrical reliability utilizing redundant circuits to most campus buildings
