Modern district heating was born in the city of
Lockport, N. Y., when Birdsill Holly launched the first
commercially successful system in 1877. Less than
30 years later, just 60 miles away, the University of
Rochester fired up a district heating operation of its
own – laying the foundation for a system that today
serves 7. 7 million sq ft of space in 58 buildings on
two of its six local campuses. The institution recently
redesigned that system, incorporating combined
heat and power and converting from steam to hot
water as part of a plan to meet campus energy needs
well into the future. The university’s commitment to
improving its heating infrastructure should come as
no surprise: It’s another example of the University of
Rochester, one of the nation’s leading private institutions, putting its motto – Meliora (‘ever better’) –
into practice.
Courtesy University of Rochester.
Tapping Combined Heat and
Power Potential
In 1903, university President Rush Rhees was
instrumental in building a coal-fired central steam
heating plant on the original campus just east
of downtown Rochester. By the mid-1920s, the
University of Rochester expanded to include a site
south of the city for its new School of Medicine and
Dentistry, plus an adjacent parcel of land along the
The Genesee River winds along the University of Rochester’s main campus, which, together with the
adjacent Medical Center Campus (at right), is served by the new low-temperature hot water district
heating system.
Genesee River – today the main campus, known
as the River Campus. To keep pace with growth,
President Rhees added a second steam plant in
1924 (personally lighting the first boiler to kick off a
large fundraising campaign). Located between the
U FansivteFrascittys of Rochester
● Founded 1850 as a private institution in Rochester, N. Y.
● Six campuses (600 acres total) include
● main 85-acre River Campus
● Medical Center, including Strong Memorial Hospital, the School of Medicine and
Dentistry, School of Nursing and Eastman Dental Center
● prestigious Eastman School of Music, ranked first among U.S. graduate
music programs
● Memorial Art Gallery, with a permanent collection of 10,000 works spanning
50 centuries
● South Campus, home to the Laboratory for Laser Energetics
● Mt. Hope Campus, including houses of the university president and provost
● Ranks among nation’s top research universities, yet one of the smallest research-intensive universities based on enrollment ( 4,608 undergraduates, plus 4,090 full-and part-time graduate students).
● Has produced eight Nobel Prize winners and 12 Pulitzer Prize winners.
● Notable alumni include Francis Bellamy, author of the original Pledge of Allegiance
published in 1892; conductor Mitch Miller; former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher;
Renee Fleming, Grammy Award-winning operatic soprano.
Source: www.rochester.edu.
River and Medical Center campuses, this plant distributed steam to buildings on both campuses
through underground tunnels. (The only part of the
original campus owned by the university today is
the Memorial Art Gallery; the 1903 heating plant
was eventually torn down. For more history, see
sidebar “Support From the Top.”)
In the 1970s, the university’s second boiler
plant was expanded; in 1998, four of its five boilers
were converted to burn natural gas and distillate fuel
oil. The two 150,000-lb/hr and two 100,000-lb/hr
boilers were more than adequate to meet the university’s peak steam load of 250,000 lb/hr. A chiller
plant with steam turbine-driven centrifugal chillers
was also built in the ‘70s to serve a new district
cooling network.
Although the university had given some consideration to CHP through the years (many local
industries like Eastman Kodak were already using
CHP in the university’s early days), it was not until
2003 that the institution conducted an in-depth
internal evaluation of its CHP potential. This evaluation included three different CHP options that were
considered individually and in various combinations
with steam and hot water distribution systems. The
first was a 30 MW gas turbine. The second was a
high-pressure boiler and back-pressure steam turbine exhausting at 165 psig. The third option was a
low-pressure steam turbine with an inlet of 165 psig
and exhausting between 5 to 10 psia to supply a
new low-temperature hot water district heating system
