Blog Viewer

Rochester City Council approves plan to design district energy system

By District Energy posted 05-04-2021 19:35

  

Yahoo! News

Summary

Plans to spend $400,000 to start designing a $15.6 million downtown Rochester district energy system received a green light Monday.

The Rochester City Council unanimously approved a plan to move toward replacing the city’s reliance on Olmsted County’s steam supply, which is scheduled to be shut down on Oct. 31, 2023.

“City Hall is unique in that it depends on steam for both cooling and heating, so if that system were to shut down, the City Hall will be out of heating and cooling,” Scot Ramsey, the city’s manager of facilities and property, told the City Council on Monday.

The steam system also serves the rest of the city-county Government Center, as well as nearby city and county buildings.

After facing a $25 million to $30 million price tag for replacing the aging infrastructure that delivers steam downtown from the county’s Waste-to-Energy facility, county commissioners opted to transition to heating and cooling the county’s downtown buildings with local systems, while steam service will continue to be available for the county’s east campus.

The City Council was presented with two options Monday: create its own building-based heating and cooling systems, or adopt a district energy plan.

The proposed district energy plan would heat and cool City Hall, the Rochester Public Library, Mayo Civic Center and Rochester Art Center, while also having the ability to expand to service private buildings, which would reduce the city’s operating costs.

“As we connect more buildings, the system becomes more efficient,” Ramsey said.

Continue Reading


#News
#DistrictEnergy
#UnitedStates
#Content
0 comments
6 views

Permalink