Mason & Hanger provided complete engineering design services for the 57,000 SF, 29 MW central power and utility plant for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Headquarters at White Oak, Maryland. The GSA entered into an energy savings performance contract (ESPC) for construction of the plant, which provides electricity, steam, hot water, and chilled water to nearly 4 million SF of complex research facilities.
The design of this co-generation power plant included connection with the local utility company’s power grid. Under normal operation, the plant is paralleled with the municipal utility and often supplies more power to the grid than the utility provides to the campus.
The FDA campus performs important, sensitive scientific research and cannot tolerate even a brief utility outage. The new plant provides energy security to the campus, allowing it to remain operational through extreme weather or manmade events and it is the largest microgrid on the east coast.
