A cooling tower at the OU Physical Plant runs Aug. 4. The plant works to give OU energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Even though it is summer time and it gets extremely hot, the summer is not considered the busiest time of the year for the power plant.

Kim Nixon, power plant manager, said the power plant stays busy constantly with someone always working on the clock, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We have a group of guys that stay here on the regular basis and we rotate them eight-hour shifts at a time for 24 hours,” Nixon said.

The OU power plant is responsible for 90 percent of the heating and cooling and partial power generation for the university’s main campus.

Nixon said there is one system that runs throughout each building on campus.

“We a have seven-and-a-half-mile tunnel that we send the chilled water out, fixes up all the buildings, all the water, all the chilled water goes through and it goes through heat exchanges and we take the heat from the buildings and brings it back to our plant,” Nixon said.

All the heat on campus exits into the cooling towers at the power plant on campus, Nixon said.

The power plant is busy every day of the year.

“We stay fairly the same as far as business because its always continuous, there is always steam flow and there is always chill water flow year around and none of that stuff ever cuts off,” Nixon said.

Nixon said the power plant has customers — students on campus — and it is the power plant’s obligation to provide service to them, year around and every day.

“The plant sends chilled water in the summer and steam in the winter, so the plant is sure to be working everyday for the customers,” Nixon said.

The plant sends out the chill water at 40 degrees to keep the buildings cool during the summer and sends the steam out at 380 degrees down the piping system to keep every building warm during the winter, he said.

The power plant tries to offset summer cost by generating power, Fred Goodwin, utility analyst, said.

“We try to offset some of the cost by generating our own power and that helps with the cost we would normally have to pay if we didn’t have generators,” Nixon said.

The power plant has three chilled water plants throughout the main campus of the university, Scott Davis, assistant director of utilities said. Chill plants one and two serve from North Boyd Street to West Timberdale Street.

He said chill plant three, which is the smallest plant, serves south campus research park.

The plant keeps track of how much energy is used by tons per hour. A ton of cooling is 12,000 British Thermal Units (BTU), Goodwin said.

Goodwin said during the month of June, chill plant No. 1 used 2,522,540 ton hours, chill plant No. 2 used 1,469,712 ton hours. The total for June was 3,992,252. Plant No. 3 only used 422,016 ton hours.

“Because July is a hotter month than June, usage went up,” Goodwin said.

The total ton hours for the plant in July were 5,532,600, he said.