The chilled water and heating plant are a legacy of IBM Corp., which built the campus and subsequently sold it to Endeavor, JER and Blackstone Real Estate. That equipment gives Austin Energy a head start on the project and makes it more economically feasible, Braddock says.

Another legacy of the IBM days is lower electrical rates for Domain tenants. Rudy says IBM had a deal with Austin Energy to pay rates significantly lower than regular commercial users through 2006. That arrangement was included in the Domain purchase and Rudy says he expects it to continue even past 2006.

For Austin Energy, the deal provides efficient energy to types of customers that can be energy hogs, Braddock says. "What we've seen though is a lot of critical operations-type of customers come into a locality and try to make the best deal they can on real estate and the building and they don't pay a lot of attention to the electrical infrastructure up front," he says.

They end up buying equipment with a lower upfront cost and easy to get up and running quickly. The problem, Braddock says, is that it usually doesn't use energy efficiently. They also spend on back-up generators and uninterruptible power supply equipment.That's bad for the utility's load management, especially in the hot summer months. "So they're actually pushing our electric peaks to new highs on our electric grid, which is not a good thing for Austin Energy as a utility," he explains. "What we have to do then is spend more money to build additional generation and purchase power in the open market when it's the very most expensive time to buy it."

Braddock says the thermal storage system will cost $1 million to $2 million and the cogeneration plant will start at $20 million. "We're selling these services, it's not a free thing, so I don't want to give the impression that Austin Energy has just decided to pick this site and give it these extraordinarily high-end services and not charge anything extra for it," he says. "It's not like that.