Cover
Story
MISSION-
CRITICAL:
Gordon R. Morrow,
Operations Manager,
Thermal Energy Corp.,
and Stephen K. Swinson, PE,
President and Chief Executive Officer,
Thermal Energy Corp.
Courtesy Thermal Energy Corp.
TECO serves the 134-acre Texas Medical Center campus, shown here. TECO’s
Central Plant is in the foreground, while Houston’s city skyline is top right.
TECO’s
reliability vital
to medical center
Editor’s Note: Thermal Energy Corp. and Rice University will
serve as hosts for IDEA’s 20th Annual Campus Energy Conference
in Houston Feb. 27-March 2, 2007. The conference will include
a tour of TECO’s facilities outlined here. IDEA is also offering a
special pre-conference workshop on emergency preparedness and
response, critical issues that TECO has addressed in its reliability
planning efforts.
The Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas, has the largest
concentration of medical research and health care institutions in the world. Its 43 member institutions, totaling 27
million sq ft of medicine-related space, receive 5. 2 million patient
visits each year and have 73,000 employees working on their premises, making them the largest work force in Houston.
Located just south of Midtown Houston, the Texas Medical
Center (TMC) comprises critical-care and high-level research institutions that need the most reliable and efficient heating and cooling
service possible – and Thermal Energy Corp.’s (TECO) district energy
system has been providing it since 1978. These are not generic office
buildings, but rather facilities charged with the quality care of
patients today and the science of health care for tomorrow. In fact,
five Texas Medical Center institutions served by TECO were ranked
among the top ten facilities for specialty care in U.S. News & World
Report’s 2005 survey of the nation’s best hospitals: The University of
Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Hermann Hospital,
St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, the Institute for Rehabilitation and
Research, and Texas Children’s Hospital.
