Who We Are

The T.B. Simon Power Plant provides the Michigan State University campus with nearly all of its energy needs. This involves operating the power plant, reservoir and wells, which provide water, steam and electricity to the main campus. The Power Plant keeps you warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and provides potable water all year!

How We Do It

The steam produced by the Power Plant provides energy for heat in the winter, cooling (through the use of chillers) in the summer, and also turns turbines that spin generators to produce electricity year round. In an average year, the power plant will generate 250 billion watts of electricity while the boilers will consume 250,000 tons of coal, 340 million cubic feet of natural gas and 450 million gallons of water. Five steam turbine generator sets, one gas turbine generator set and one heat recovery steam generator are all housed in the power plant. Campus chilled water is served from a central chilled water plant, (not at the central power plant) and from individual chillers located around campus.

The T.B. Simon Power Plant is a co-generating facility, generating electricity from the steam as it flows out to heat the campus. The co-generation system operates at approximately 60 percent efficiency, as compared to a conventional electric plant operating at 30 percent efficiency. Maintaining its own power plant allowed MSU's main campus to avoid losing power during the Northeast Blackout of 2003, which affected 50 million people across Canada and the United States.