Downtown district cooling: A 21st century approach

On December 1, 1992, the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) met on Chicago`s historic Navy Pier and ushered in a new era of competition for energy supply in Chicago. The MPEA, a state agency created for the purposes of promoting and operating fair and exposition facilities within the Chicago area (including the McCormick Place exposition center and Navy Pier), voted to accept a third-party proposal to provide district heating and cooling services to the existing McCormick Place facilities and a million square feet of new exposition space. The winning bidder was a joint venture between Trigen Energy, the nation`s largest provider of district energy services, and Peoples Gas, the gas distribution company which serves Chicago. This vote culminated two years of effort by the Energy Division of Chicago`s Department of Environment to analyze the feasibility and promote the implementation of a district energy system to serve the expanded McCormick Place and its environs in the South Loop neighborhood. Initial services began in November, 1993, with a new hot and cold water piping system interconnecting the three existing exhibition facilities. The final buildout of the system, with a combined peak demand predicted at 160 MMBtu of heating and 15,920 tons of and cooling, is scheduled for completion in the summer of 1997