As a part of the testing process for its new central heating plant, the University of Massachusetts will experience power outages later this month when the campus is vacated for spring break.

“We’re nearing the end of the construction period,” said Jim Cahill, Facilities and Campus Planning (F’CP) director. “We’re currently involved in the commissioning of the plant, which involved starting up and testing the systems.

The first round of tests will take place on March 15, the official beginning of spring break. The campus will experience a 12-hour period of intermittent power outages from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. the next morning.

“All of the machinery is brand new and it needs to go through a lengthy shakedown process to make sure it all works,” said Jim Hunt, F’CP communications director.

However, if the first round of testing is inconclusive, another series of tests will be required. These power outages would take place overnight from Monday March 17 to the early morning hours of March 18.

“It’s a complicated process since we have to run smaller tests before we can test the entire system,” Cahill said. “We have to plan shutdowns on the campus well ahead of time, before we even know if the equipment will perform close to as expected.”

The UMass Office of Facilities and Campus Planning outlined the details of the planned power outages in a mass e-mail message to students, faculty and staff over the weekend.

Though the student body will not be on campus during the scheduled outages, the temporary loss of electricity will still effect some departments and offices. For example, research and laboratory equipment, freezers and computer servers will be affected.

One of the goals of the testing process is verify that the facility can shed electric loads that are produced instantaneously if the gas turbine generators were to shut down. Otherwise a power outage could leave the campus powerless.

Tests of the of the plant’s heat production capabilities began several weeks ago and have been characterized by a loud whistling noise and perpetual ejection of steam into the atmosphere.

Barring any significant snags during the testing phase and approval from environmental officials, the new plant should take over production shortly after commencement.

“We didn’t count on using the plant this heating season,” Cahill said. “Hopefully some time this summer we’ll have it up and running.”

But before that can happen, the contractor needs to run the plant for 30 days as a part of a reliability test. If the facility performs to expectations, the University will take over operations at the end of the period.

The $50 million facility will handle all of the campus’ steam heating needs, as well as the vast majority of the University’s electricity needs.

Part of the project will allow the campus to demolish the existing plant, currently located near the Campus Center parking garage.

“That will be a lengthy process. We want to be able to recycle as many materials as possible,” Hunt said. “They are a few plans floating out there, but none of them have any more credence than any other. Whatever it becomes, it will look a lot better than it does now.”

Some of the proposed ideas include making the area into a green space, expanding the parking garage or constructing an academic building, according to Cahill.

But both of the processes are far enough down the road that the campus does not have a current timeline for this portion of the project.

Hunt said that the University is in the process of developing a facilities master plan for the campus that would dictate future improvements.

Michael King can be reached at [email protected]