Twin City Rapid Transit Company Steam Power Plant

About this property

The Southeast Steam Plant, formerly known as the Twin City Rapid Transit Company Steam Power Plant, is a combined heat and power plant on the Mississippi River in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States owned by the University of Minnesota. The plant was constructed in 1903 to provide electricity for the Twin City Rapid Transit street railway system. It supported the area's major form of public transportation for 50 years. Minneapolis converted to buses in 1949–1954, and in the early 1950s, Northern States Power Company (now Xcel Energy) acquired the building. The University of Minnesota purchased the plant in 1976 for $1. The facility heats 94 buildings (nearly all of the university's Minneapolis campus), provides electricity to cool 19 of those buildings, and provides steam to the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Minnesota State Board of Health and Cedar Riverside People's Center. Captured as the steam leaves the plant, pressure powers the plant and provides 20% of the university's electricity. The plant's steam is transported through an 18-mile (29 km) network of tunnels to the campus buildings and would be enough to heat 55,000 homes. Each student pays about $200 for energy and those in residence halls pay $375 a year for heat and air conditioning, water heating and dining services. The plant is university building #059. The university's Energy Management department, part of Facilities Management, oversees the plant. Foster Wheeler Twin Cities was contracted with the U of M to operate it from 1992 to 2016, when Veolia North America took over. Just upstream is the Hennepin Island Hydroelectric Plant operated by Xcel Energy. The university's Saint Paul, Minnesota campus three miles (5 km) away has its own plant. In addition the university has generators, pumps and boilers powered by diesel and natural gas, most used only in emergencies, with 11 used as peak shaving units. Before pipes were reinsulated, employees needed breaks once an hour to work in the tunnels which reached 115 °F (46 °C). Insulation reduced the ambient temperature to 80 °F (27 °C), and the loss of energy from 10% to 4%, and over time resulted in a 25% campus-wide decrease in energy consumption. The university closed the Southeast plant to gut and rebuild the interior, and in 2000, reopened it and closed down its old coal-burning power plant. Completed in 2005, exterior rehabilitation won a local historic preservation award, presented to the university and Miller Dunwiddie Architects, McGough Construction, Hess Roise Historical Consultants, Meyer Borgman Johnson, Michaud Cooley Erickson, INSPEC, Akiba Architects, and Kimley Horn.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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