District Cooling Plant 1 Cooling Tower Expansion

District Cooling Plant 1 is one of two plants serving customers in Downtown Austin. It was built in 2000 within a state parking garage located at 300 San Antonio Street. The plant is currently limited to 7,100 tons of cooling capacity produced by eight cooling tower cells of 900 tons each. In order to meet growing customer demand, an additional 1,800 tons of cooling tower capacity is needed to operate all five chillers at full capacity and maintain 900 tons of cooling tower cell redundancy. In addition, this expansion will assist in meeting the thermal storage goal of 20 MW by 2025 included in the current Austin Energy Resource, Generation and Climate Protection Plan.