Utilities Services strives to maintain, improve, and provide safe, reliable, efficient, and sustainable utilities through effective energy conservation and innovation. A team traditioned in camaraderie and united in dedication to providing an atmosphere conducive to holding with the praxis of teaching and research for the students and staff, and to the entire Norman campus.
Utilities on the Norman Campus support over 28,000 students in approximately 300 buildings on 3,000 acres. The utilities are steam, chilled water, electricity, natural gas, water, wastewater, compressed air, deionized water, and tunnel structures. Services include the following:
Operate and maintain equipment and distribution systems.
Capital project management and support of OU growth projects.
Monthly meter reading (approximately 750 meters) for customer usage and billing.
Locating and flagging underground utilities for dig requests.
Ensuring compliance with Local, state, and federal regulatory requirements.
The following chart shows the flow of utilities from their origin point through mechanical systems like water wells, electric chillers, steam chillers, boilers, turbines and sewer collection to the final delivery of utilities like potable water, non-potable water, electricity, chilled water, heating steam, natural gas and sewer through distribution systems. A downloadable PDF of the infographic is available immediately following the image.
OU owns, operates, and distributes all the utilities through what is known as District Energy here on the Norman Campus. District energy refers to a system where heating and/or cooling, in the form of hot water (or steam) and chilled water, is produced at a central facility and distributed to external customers through a distribution piping system. A district energy system replaces the need for each building to have its own boiler and chiller system.
District energy systems have a long history and are utilized worldwide. System sizes range from several megawatts to service industrial or institutional complexes, such as universities or hospitals, to many hundreds of megawatts designed to service entire cities
Advantages of District Energy
Reliability
District energy (DE) systems have a high degree of reliability, as they are built to high quality standards, are under constant professional monitoring and have built in redundancy. Major individual building mechanical equipment is eliminated, reducing the risk of breakdown and emergency repairs in individual buildings.
Safety
By eliminating boilers, chillers and associated high pressure and temperature equipment, chemicals and fuels, individuals' buildings reduce their operations and maintenance costs, and at the same time increase the building operating safety.
Flexibility
Because there are no boilers or chillers in the individual customer buildings, systems and controls can operate as per design intent all year round and not run inefficiently during Spring and Fall shoulder periods (this is typically caused by the building boilers and chillers having a minimum operating level that is higher than the building need during the shoulder periods).
Property Enhancement
Space savings in individuals' buildings resulting from the displacement of individual heating / cooling systems within the building. Also there is a reduction in noise and vibration.
