Northridge Magazine

Physical Plant Management (PPM) Executive Director Tom Brown shows off CSUN’s 1 megawatt fuel cell power plant like a proud parent. With good reason. The plant is the single largest fuel cell power plant at any university in the world.

But there are things about the two-year-old plant that mean much more to Brown, a man whose PPM team and students for years have racked up more statewide sustainability/environment awards than will fit on one page.

For starters, the plant—which generates the base load electricity for the university’s facilities and surplus heat for hot water—will effectively reduce the university’s C02 emissions into the environment by 60 million pounds during its lifetime.

The fuel cell plant runs on natural gas and produces electric power, recovering otherwise wasted heat with an efficiency approaching 80 percent. “This means more power, less waste,” points out a design report compiled by CSUN College of Engineering and Science students, who worked with PPM on the project.

“As a reference,” Brown said, “the power that comes to your doorstep from the utility company arrives at about 33 percent efficiency, meaning the waste by-product from coal and oil or gas is going into the atmosphere. At 80 percent efficiency, you can see the difference…It’s a clear reduction of impact on the environment.”

Located south of the University Student Union Complex, the fuel cell project’s second phase installed a 2,000-ton satellite chiller plant, powered by the fuel cell plant, to help meet CSUN’s air conditioning and heating needs. The role of the campus’ engineering student team in designing and implementing processes that made the power/chiller plant “the most sustainable plant possible with a minimal carbon footprint” is a source of pride for Brown and his PPM colleagues.

“We have a long history of doing projects involving students and faculty,” said Brown, whose department has worked with the engineering college and the College of Science and Mathematics. “With this project we had a small student team that wrote the specifications, under my guidance, to bid the fuel cell equipment competitively and publicly. That was the first competitive bid of a public/private fuel cell installation anywhere in the world.”

Another point of pride is the plant’s role in the care and feeding of its nearest neighbor: the campus’ flourishing subtropical rain forest.

For its work on the satellite chiller plant and rain forest, the student design team brought home the Energy Efficiency Partnership Best Practices Award, Student Design Team Project, from the 2009 Sustainability Conference of the UC, CSU and California Community College systems. (Brown himself was named CSU Sustainability Champion.)

The campus’ first energy management system came online in 1981. Back then, Brown said, “we were one of the few campuses with an energy management system. We’ve expanded that system many, many times over since then.”

He looks at sustainability with a mix of fervor and practicality. “We’re business people; we do look at the bottom line,” said Brown. “But the bottom line still drives good stewardship in the use of our resources. Of course, our big resource is energy; that’s been the most costly; the most volatile. And it’s pretty much the biggest impact on our environment if it’s poorly used.”

Clearly, Brown and his PPM peers historically have had next to no tolerance for waste. With the fuel cell project, said the student team report, the main goal was “to design and build the ultimate sustainable system where all byproducts are used.”

See our Web exclusives on CSUN’s “green” buildings and solar electric installations.

— Brenda Roberts

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