Six buildings temporarily lose hot water, heating following power plant failure

Several uphill dorms temporarily lost heat and hot water on Dec. 1, following a failure in the main power plant on the Medford/Somerville campus.

The affected buildings included Wren Hall, West Hall, Hill Hall, Houston Hall, Miller Hall and Carmichael Hall, and students living in those halls were notified of the issue by the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife) staff via email.

"There is an issue within the system, and you will temporarily not have hot water or heat," the Dec. 1 email read. "Facilities is working to complete the repair as soon as possible."

According to Senior Facilities Director Steve Nasson, the Medford/Somerville power plant went down around 4 p.m. on Dec. 1 and was fixed around 8 p.m. Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC) mechanics were on-site until 11 p.m. and fixed the most recent issue with the power plant, according to Nasson.

Nasson, who is in charge of facilities on all three Tufts campuses, said that the power plant issues were caused by problems with the building automation system, which controls the plant's HVAC systems. He added that last week's incident was the longest period of time that the plant has been down this semester. There have only been two to three incidents this semester, and each one lasted for about 30 minutes or less, he said.

"It's usually a very simple repair, but figuring out what caused [the issue] can take some time," Nasson said.

According to Nasson, the main power plant on campus, which is located behind Dowling Hall, was built in 1954. It is currently in the process of being replaced and a new power plant, the planned Central Energy Plant (CEP), should be completed in 12 to 13 months, he said.

The new CEP, which will be located south of Dowling Hall on Boston Ave., will "replace the aging, 60-year-old, existing plant, which will be demolished when the new plant is up and running," according to the Tufts construction website.

Nasson explained that Tufts Facilities has various methods of determining if there are any issues with the power plants.

"If there's an issue during the day, we have controls in the office that will tell us we have a problem," he said. "If it's after hours, we rely on [the Tufts University Police Department] to let us know."

Nasson said that dining halls such as the one inside Carmichael have backup plans in case of issues like last Tuesday's power failure, which caused issues for kitchen equipment that require steam to run. As a result, students were provided with recyclable plates and cups, instead of ones made out of ceramic or glass, he said.

Nasson explained that the other campus dining hall, Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center, uses a separate power plant, providing a dining alternative if one campus power plant fails.

"There's a smaller power plant…by Dewick, so Dewick is fed by that plant," he said. "We do have two different options when it comes to [powering] dining halls, so we can always keep one of them open."

According to Director of ResLife Yolanda King, ResLife's main job during the incident was to keep students informed.

“In this past incident, it was just a matter of letting the students know that there was a problem and an anticipated time frame for [power] being restored," she said.

According to King, in the case of a long-term issue with heat and hot water, students would be moved to empty rooms, asked to stay with their friends or housed in the lounge areas of dorms with heat and hot water. However, she could not recall a time when this has happened at Tufts.

"We mainly focus on the students' well-being during that time period," she said.

Nasson said that he has a "dedicated team" working with him to resolve issues that arise, such as the power plant going down.

"We do the best that we can to keep everybody as happy as possible," he said.