The Daily
Summary
On the east side of campus, between the Engineering Annex and the Burke Gilman Trail, passerbys may notice an artificial waterfall coming from a building along the trail. While some may think this building serves a different purpose than any other building on campus, they may not know the building is UW’s power plant, which is responsible for providing heat to roughly 180 buildings.
“At the power plant, we produce steam to heat the campus,” Mark Kirschenbaum, assistant director of campus utilities, said. “That’s our primary function. The steam is just a really convenient way to move energy around the campus. So instead of having miles and miles of natural gas pipes and all the attendant worries of leaks, we just move steam.”
Once the power plant produces the steam needed to heat UW’s buildings, it travels through the university’s tunnel system, which runs 80 feet below ground all the way to University Way, according to Kirschenbaum. In general, the tunnel system isn’t a safe place for people not working at the plant.
“It’s very important that students don’t go into the tunnels because it’s meant to be a utility space, and there’s a lot of high voltage cables down there,” Kirschenbaum said.
According to Kirschenbaum, the power plant also uses the steam it produces to heat the domestic water supply in campus buildings for places such as bathrooms, laundry rooms, and research laboratories. After the steam warms each building and its water supply, it’s then converted back into water and travels back to the plant, thus creating a sustainable recycling process.
“The process is a huge conservation effort, and the water is already hot, so it takes a lot less energy to break it into steam again,” Kirschenbaum said. “We recycle about 90% of the water, so that’s pretty good.”
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