Forgive me for my technological ignorance, but as you scroll down from this post, you may notice that my posts are not in chronological order. I blame Google or Blogspot or any other company that this platform is owned by, but enough about the chaos here. Let's talk about the chaos that I experienced at Abbott Power Plant on Thursday. Now this chaos may seem a little different from the chaos you are thinking about. When I first walked into Abbott on Thursday, aside from noticing that my eardrums were slowly deteriorating, I noticed a system of completely controlled chaos.
Abbott Power Plant sits on Oak Street at the end of Gregory. While this may be the farthest west campus runs, this plant, with the two iconic pillars of steam, has a different significance on campus than most people realize. When one first hears Power Plant, one automatically zones in on electricity. While Abbott does provide a significant amount of electricity to campus, about 2/3 of the total electricity used by campus, it also provides all of the steam used to heat and cool certain aspects on campus. The steam that is created from both the burning of coal and natural gas is used to heat the entire campus through a series of tunnels. The steam leaves the plant, reaching a maximum of 185 degrees Fahrenheit just outside the plant, and travels to all corners, heating the educational buildings and the residential facilities. It is also used in the dining halls in the steam tables and certain other aspects that might seem too slight to have any significance. The combination of the multiple sources of energy and power all work together to maintain one of the largest campuses nationwide. The completely controlled chaos helps to create a plan that is both economically and environmentally safe while still offering all the provision needed to keep U of I running.
One of the only architectural patterns I saw at Abbott is not part of the original architectural design. As we walked through the plant, we came upon a threshold. Now this threshold might not be as physically important as it is symbolically. In 2010 the University pledged to gradually stop using coal as a plan to lower the carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The newer and cleaner fuel to burn, natural gas, now has its own side of the power plant, marked by a large threshold that symbolizes the transition from older to newer, more up-to-date, techniques for producing energy. Although it may not seem to be a big deal when you walk through it, that large opening symbolizes the great change between the more harmful, and for lack of a better term, dirtier energy source of coal to a cleaner source, natural gas. This difference could even be seen in the environment inside Abbott as the newer portion was much cleaner and seemed more up-to-date than the portion that houses all of the coal furnaces.
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