Youngstown - Background 

The system grew rapidly after the 1980 acquisition through its first few years and now serves approximately 85 percent of the occupied downtown buildings (by square footage). 

Current heating customers include the Youngstown State University, South Side Medical Center, National Uniform Service, City of Youngstown, Mahoning County and the majority of downtown office and commercial buildings. About 70% of our customers are for not-for-profit institutions. 

Altogether, Youngstown Thermal heats about 5,859,000 square feet of buildings in downtown Youngstown. 

Since acquiring the business from Ohio Edison 14 years ago, Youngstown Thermal has provided heating service that has benefited Youngstown in many ways. The overall system efficiency has increased by about 80%. We are now heating almost twice the square footage of building space with the same amount of fuel as in the early 1970s. 

Along with this dramatic increase in efficient use of energy, we have cut air emissions by 95% and have eliminated water waste from our partial closed-loop distribution system. We also have added natural gas to our fuel options. 

The district heating system's 5-year reliability record exceeds 99.9 percent based on customer-hours, a product of total number of hours of desired service. 

These accomplishments position the company to do even better in the decades to come. We are currently testing and developing the use of biomass from urban waste wood, such as tree trimmings and discarded pallets, as a boiler fuel. 

District Cooling Takes Center Stage 

But the company is now in a different place than it was in the early 1980s. Youngstown Thermal has largely saturated the heating market with nearly 85 percent of the downtown market and is seeking new opportunities for growth and efficiency. 

Faced with mounting environmental challenges, huge capital investments to replace on-site chillers, and great uncertainty and risks for the future, district cooling is a wise alternative for downtown Youngstown buildings. 

In the past, many Youngstown buildings were cooled with once-through city water, a practice that wasted millions of gallons of water. This practice has become costly, and it puts unnecessary flow to the sewer system. 

Many other buildings are cooled by old inefficient on-site chillers with environmentally damaging chloroflurocarbon (CFC) based refrigerants. These refrigerants are being phased out globally due to depletion of the ozone and global warming. 

Recognizing the need for district cooling, Thermal began taking steps to implement a system. Last year, Youngstown Thermal Cooling was incorporated as a subsidiary of the company to develop and install a new district cooling system. 

This new company was formed to ensure existing heating customers that cross-subsidization would not occur between the heating and cooling companies. The City Council gave the new company the right to use the streets by granting it a franchise this summer. 

After some false starts and delays in securing initial customer contracts, the cooling system will begin operation in spring 1995 with an estimated five customers on-line. 

Prior to project implementation, the primary obstacle was convincing customers to make a 20-year commitment to something that didn't yet exist. That has been made somewhat easier because of a strong record of efficient heating system operation and Thermal's nearby cooling system in Pittsburgh that serves hospitals, a college, and commercial buildings. Yet Thermal still has had to clearly and objectively demonstrate to building owners and design engineers the true total cost and risk of ownership of on-site chiller systems, including design, installation, operation, maintenance and ultimate replacement. 

        A typical cost comparision is shown below.



Typical Cooling Cost Comparision

                Electric Chiller

                (500 Ton)

                                                Electric Chillers Purchased

                                                (500 Ton)       Cooling

1 Capital       $210,000/763,888 ton hr.        $0.055           -

                5 year simple payback

2 Maintenance   $9,500/763,888 ton hr.          $0.012           -

3 Electricity   1.5 kwhr/ton hr x $0.17/kwhr    $0.255           -

4 Water, supplies, etc.                         $0.030           -

5 Purchased Cooling                             ________________$0.22___

6 Summary:              Unit price $/ton hr     $0.352          $0.22

                                    Total $        $268,888         $172,455

                                  Savings $       Base           $96, 432

Thermal is listening carefully to prospective customers' needs and then tailoring its proposals accordingly. Offerings will include phased-in demands, base-load demands, technical and financial assistance with conversions, and buy-outs of purchased on-site chillers. Owners will be signing long-term cooling agreements in lieu of installing new chillers to replace old units, most use CFCs. 

Technologies Team with Communications 

One of the most important available technologies is a chilled-water storage system. With this type system, Youngstown Thermal could make chilled water at night, with off-peak electricity, store it in a storage tank (measuring 100 feet in diameter and 70 feet high with a capacity of 4,000 peak tons and 30,000 ton-hours), and then pump it out to buildings during the daytime for peak cooling requirements. 

The storage system would create significant advantages to our customers as well as to the local electric utility. For our customers, this system would produce low-cost cooling with lower initial capital as well as lower ongoing energy and operating and maintenance costs with excellent reliability. 

For the local utility and the community at large, we would take megawatts of electricity off-peak. This important reduction of on-peak electric demand could help defer or eliminate the need for new power plants and help improve the efficiency and environmental record of existing power plants. 

Over the next three years we will be constructing nearly 12,000 trench feet of welded steel direct bury twin cooling pipes in central downtown Youngstown. The key to success of this construction effort will be early and frequent communication to those affected. This communication effort will include personal contact with building owners and businesses along the construction route as well as letters and frequent news releases. 

We will tell people what we're going to do and when we're going to do it and then make every effort to stick to it! 

Through district cooling we will successfully expand our overall thermal energy business while enhancing the already established heating business. We will be able to significantly expand the utilization of our existing equipment with the addition of steam absorption chillers. 

Most importantly, we have strengthened our customer relationships by effectively meeting a very real customer need for a cost-effective, reliable and safe air-conditioning source that will help customers collectively solve a common problem with respect to meeting the need to replace CFCs with an EPA-approved alternate. 

Youngstown will be able to boast that it is among a select number of cities that can offer district heating and cooling as an economic development tool for its central business district.