Contract Awarded for Power Plant Infrastructure Upgrade at the University of Texas

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Harvey-Cleary Engineers & Builders (Austin, Texas) has been selected to provide construction management services for the proposed $37 million Phase II utility infrastructure upgrade project at the University of Texas at Austin's Hal C. Weaver Power Plant. For related information, see June 28, 2007, article - Design Underway for University of Texas Turbine Addition.

Construction plans call for the addition of a 30-megawatt (MW) General Electric combustion turbine generator, which has already been ordered, to replace a 12.6 MW Westinghouse combustion turbine generator. The new turbine will be attached to a 185,000-pound-per-hour natural-gas-fired boiler. Along with the turbine, the project will consist of building a 39,000-ton-per-hour cold water storage tank on a parking lot west of the new Harris Substation, as well as the replacement of an old wood, 50,000-gallon-per-minute (gpm) cooling tower with a 40,000 gpm fiberglass cooling tower. Installing peaking generators within an existing power plant yard and an inlet air cooling system for gas-turbine operation will provide additional efficiency.

Construction is expected to begin in the next month or two with a completion date targeted for August 2009. The turbine installation is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Carter & Burgess Incorporated (Fort Worth, Texas) provided engineering services for the turbine addition and determined the most cost-efficient technology feasible for the addition.

The University of Texas at Austin was founded in 1883. It is considered to be one of the largest public universities in the United States. Offering 12,000 degrees yearly, the university employs approximately 16,500 faculty and staff members with an enrollment of 39,000 undergraduates and 11,000 post-graduates. The university's total yearly budget is estimated at $1.7 billion with research funding listed at $411 million. The Hal C. Weaver Power Plant provides a heating capacity of 1.15 million pounds per hour, 40,800 tons of cooling capacity and 77 MW of generation capacity while servicing 160 buildings for the UT campus.

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