I’ve come to the conclusion that folks get steamed up when they arrive in downtown Raleigh via Capital Boulevard. It’s not the traffic, mind you.
It’s their endless curiosity about what we’re doing to improve the old Caswell Steam Station located near the intersection of McDowell and Lane streets. It started with a small spray of steam that escaped from a nearby manhole cover – a minor energy loss that looked dramatic when the mercury plunged.
The project was delayed, for safety reasons, until we could count on mild weather to completely shut down the steam plant and cool the equipment. Today, however, we are in the midst of a major renovation of the Caswell Steam Station, which was constructed in the 1940s to manage heating and cooling through a maze of underground tunnels in the Downtown State Government Complex.
The Caswell operation is part of a larger, four-boiler Central Steam Plant system that went online in 1992 to provide primary heating for most downtown state facilities. Formerly housed in an aging, white painted brick structure, the Caswell works are being relocated to two secure, waterproof concrete vaults that will increase both operational efficiency and worker safety.
The project includes significant infrastructure improvements, including replacement of condensate lines that become fragile over decades of use, and new valve systems that better regulate energy use and are easier to maintain. Proactively upgrading outmoded systems now, instead of when they give out and pose additional risk, is the smart road to long-term safety and energy savings.