Operations at the South-Central Plant have been affected by the increased number of mechanical failures seen on a yearly basis. These failures are a result of equipment meeting or exceeded its useful life. The proposed renovation will be phased to allow the Plant to maintain the loads it is currently serving and renovate and upgrade it to run reliably and efficiently for the next 20 years.

The South Central Plant is a vital component to the operations of Harris County downtown buildings that provide county services to over 4.6 million residents. The Plant is 16,415 square feet and houses the mechanical, hydronic, electrical, and ancillary equipment necessary to produce thermal utilities (chilled water and steam).

The plant renovation will include an addition of a second-floor penthouse, to house the electrical gear; structural modifications to the building to support the new cooling towers; and reconfiguration of the chiller bays, to accommodate four new 2,000-ton chillers with integral variable frequency drives, new pumps, piping, ancillary equipment, and controls for a total of 8,000 tons of capacity. An additional 2,000-ton chiller will be added in the future as a separate project.

The project was originally structured to be completed in phases, in order to keep the plant operational during construction. We created a plan utilizing a temporary chiller plant feeding the current customer demand, allowing the existing plant to be taken completely off-line, saving the construction effort 12 months in schedule and nearly $10 million in construction cost.