The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently won the System of the Year Award (SOYA) at IDEA2024. SOYA is the highest honor IDEA can confer on a district energy system, and it’s a recognition of high-level performance, reliability, efficiency and industry engagement, while also furthering the goals of the district energy industry.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign system couples the generation and consumption of energy streams to help manage and decrease system demand, thereby reducing costs and emissions. The cogeneration system simultaneously produces steam and electricity and supplies approximately 85% of the campus’ energy needs. Abbott Power Plant is at the heart of the system, which also includes the Energy Management Control Center, which allows for the continuous review and improvement of building performance through remote, computerized monitoring; thermal energy storage to help manage and lower system demand; and two large-scale on-site solar arrays, vital to achieving campus sustainability goals.
Over the last 15 years, the campus has reduced its energy use per square foot by approximately 40%, and the university’s Facilities & Services unit is continuing to improve on efficiencies and make investments that support innovative and aggressive decarbonization strategies in the years to come.
IDEA recently sat down with Rob Roman, Director of Utilities & Energy Services, Mike Larson, Director of Utility Production and Frank Colacicco, Associate Director, Utility Distribution of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to talk about their big win. And, the major takeaway? The recognition has been giving the often-unsung heroes of campus facilities, utilities and energy services a major boost. The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
IDEA: Let’s start at the beginning, can you tell us what prompted you to apply for the SOYA?
Rob Roman: Our main goal was to highlight the staff we have within utilities and energy services. We have superstars that come to work everyday and are the unsung heroes and the people behind the power that a lot of the campus doesn’t know exists, but are diligently working, and at all hours of the day and night to make sure that energy is getting delivered so that we can carry out our core mission at the university. I wanted those people to be honored by being recognized with this honor from IDEA.
There’s a lot of technology behind what we do, but what is technology if you don’t have the right people? This is one heck of a crew and I’m really proud to be a part of it.
Frank Colacicco: For me, winning the SOYA brings a lot of pride. When were down in Orlando [for IDEA2024] participating in the award ceremony, I was amazed at the number of people in the room. To walk up on stage and be recognized like that was a very proud moment. The work that takes place on campus just amazes me. It makes me very proud to be part of a team that has these capabilities and to have the folks that take the personal ownership to put together such a safe and reliable system.
Mike Larson: We really did this for the employees, and I think we underestimated the impact that it would have on them. I’ve been in this role for almost 25 years now, and the reality is people just show up every day, and we all show up, we all do our job. When it’s snowing or hailing out and other people get to stay home because the campus is closed, we don’t have that luxury, and we’re very blessed that people enjoy the job and they value it such that they do.
The university runs because these people are at work every day, just doing their job. It kind of gets taken for granted. We don’t need people patting us on the back, but everybody needs to know their value. As the SOYA award was announced and people started hearing about it, there was so much pride from the employees.
So, the value of having an award like this, it’s a big deal, and I think it’s probably a way bigger deal than people realize. Recognizing people in this industry that don’t often get recognized – that’s a big thing.
In fact, we had T-shirts made up to share with employees with the university logo on the front and the IDEA logo and the text “2024 System of the Year Award Winner on the back.
IDEA: And what makes the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign system unique from a technological standpoint?
Mike Larson: We have a long history of being innovative in a lot of ways and of constantly trying to improve that goes back decades. In 1980, the university and the state made a commitment to installing the best available technology that would allow us to burn coal, which largely consisted of a wet scrubber. I won’t go into too many details on this technology, but one of its benefits was that it helped with acid rain issues. We also retrofitted our boilers and put in systems to take care of particulate. At the time, it was the second system of its type to be installed in the country.
In 2000, the energy market in our area deregulated, so we needed capacity and we needed to position ourselves to be able to operate in that deregulated market, so we launched a combustion turbine with a heat recovery steam generator, as well as three more steam turbines. Doing this increased our electric generation almost threefold. Several other leading universities have installed this technology in just the last few years, while we have been using it for 25 years.
Then, about ten years ago, around 2014, we merged production distribution with the end usage into the utilities and energy services group. We’ve been able to reduce energy usage so much in the last few years and serve the campus as best we can because of that integration in our organization.
IDEA: Nuclear has become such a hot topic with big tech companies connecting to nuclear power for their data center and AI needs. Can you also talk about the current work with a micro-reactor on campus?
Mike Larson: That is the latest piece in this area of innovation. For the last seven years we have been looking at ways to advance our core mission to provide utilities to campus while also supporting the university’s larger core mission to educate and research.
We are doing that by partnering with university classes – giving tours to the power plant and university solar farm, and some professors also develop projects related to the tours. We’ve also actively engaged with campus researchers. There has been a ton of research on projects at Abbott Power Plant related to carbon capture.
Now, with the micro-reactor, the proposal is to locate it next to the power plant so that steam generated from the micro-reactor could be piped over to the power plant and used to facilitate our co-generation. And, of course, the micro-reactor will also be used for research projects on campus.
Also, the Sustainable Technology Center is a group on campus that has helped get Abbott Power Plant designated as a globally recognized test facility, which means we’re recognized as a test facility that’s willing to collaborate with people who want to do research.
Rob Roman: The important thing with this recognition is that we’re not just operating the system of the year, we’re developing the next future systems of the year here at the University of Illinois.
IDEA: What other benefits have you gained from being an IDEA member?
Rob Roman: I’m grateful to IDEA for the opportunity to highlight the successes we had, and also give us a venue where we can work collaboratively with other systems to find paths that we can venture to in the future. It’s a great collaborative effort. I really appreciate the members that are involved in the IDEA conferences and the open dialogue that occurs. CampusEnergy is the one conference I try not to miss every year.
IDEA: That’s great to hear, thank you for speaking with us and congratulations again on your SOYA win!
Rob Roman/Mike Larson/Frank Colacicco: Thank you.
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