Iowa State produces its own utilities, which may be a little-known fact among students.

Utility Services, a department of Facilities Planning and Management (FP&M), operates everything from power generation and sewers to traffic control and telecommunications cables.

Utility Services provides the campus with electricity, heating and cooling through the ISI Heating Plant, which is located on the northeast corner of campus. The plant was constructed on its current site in 1907, according to a press release.

Jeff Witt, assistant director of FP&M-utilities, said the plant is an economical source of power for ISU because of a process called cogeneration.

Cogeneration is the process of using the heat by-product of electricity production for heating and cooling buildings, he said. A normal public utility loses much of the heat energy it generates into the atmosphere.

The ISU plant can use the excess energy for heating and cooling, he said.

Cogeneration allows for a significant reduction in plant waste.

“We can be in the neighborhood of 60 percent overall plant efficiency. [A] normal utility plant is 35 percent,” Witt said.

The plant is staffed 24 hours a day, year-round. Witt said that only a major catastrophe could shut the plant down for more than a few hours.

If such an event were to occur, Witt said electricity could be brought in from alternative sources.

“We are connected in such a manner that we could route electricity from somewhere else,” Witt said.

The utility manages mechanical systems such as sewage and natural gas.

The university owns and operates its own sanitary and storm sewer systems.

The sanitary sewer dumps into the Ames sewer system, which also is owned in part by ISU. The utility collects 450 million gallons of sewage annually from campus buildings.

Electric distribution provides control systems for electrical power, telecommunication cables, campus lighting and traffic signals at nine intersections.