Photo By Gary Sheftick | Richard G. Kidd IV, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for energy and...... read more read more
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WASHINGTON - Solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable-energy projects are springing up throughout the Army, but there is no affordable way yet to store the power for when it is needed, experts said.
Power storage is the most significant challenge facing the Army today in the area of energy security, said Richard G. Kidd IV, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for energy and sustainability.
Kidd chaired a panel on energy sustainability during the Association of the U.S. Army Institute of Land Warfare's one-day "Hot Topics" forum on installation management, March 10, in Arlington, Virginia.
"We're 98 percent dependent on the grid," said Robert Sperberg, chief of the Facilities Policy Division in the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management, or ACSIM.
"What happens to the grid, happens to the installation, happens to our ability to serve," Sperberg said.
When a crisis hits, the Army needs the ability to continue operating, he said. It needs to be able to store power so that when the commercial grid goes down, the military can still function.
"Right now we have solar panels that when the sun goes down, the power goes down," he said.
Nothing exists yet to affordably store renewable energy - at least nothing that is durable, safe and affordable, said Brad Fiebig with Lockheed Martin, another member of the panel.
The missing piece is micro-grids and battery storage, he said.
Kidd said the CEOs of three large utility companies told him that solar panels are not a threat to their business model - however, they realize solar power coupled with affordable storage would cause a "radical disruption to their business model," Kidd said.
The largest single investment in the energy industry over the next few years will be in power storage, Kidd said, referring to a survey in which 52 percent of CEOs polled picked storage as the number-one potential for investment.
The Army works closely with utility companies to realize efficiencies, Kidd said.
"We are not in competition with our utility partners," he said. "No one wins if the utility companies go bankrupt."
The Army's budget for energy projects this year was cut 80 percent, Sperberg said. "That's a tremendous loss of our buying power" for energy projects, he said, but one way to get around it is partnering with industry.
The Army's partnership with industry brought it $500 million in utility energy savings contracts, Sperberg said.
Soon economic well-being may depend on energy efficiency, Kidd said.
"Our installations are not separate and distinct from the megatrends that are affecting the planet," Kidd said. "Urbanization, climate change, resource scarcity, growing middle class, technology diffusion - all of those are felt on our installations.
"The way we've done business in the past on our installations… is insufficient to meet the challenges we're going to face in 2025 and beyond," he said.
Army installations must change from a system based on scenarios to one of resiliency.
They must have multiple, redundant systems of power, he said.
Col. Gregory R. McClinton, garrison commander of Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, or APG, discussed the energy-saving performance contracts, or ESPCs, underway on his installation.
Projects include replacing leaking steam lines, improving lighting, and installing a chill cooler system for a super-computing facility at the Army Research Laboratory.
Geothermal power is expected to save $14 million over the life cycle of the project on APG.
His workforce reduced water usage in the Edgewood area of the installation by 15 percent. Part of that was by recapturing waste water to be used in boilers, and reducing the steam loss in the pipelines.
In addition, remediating soil at a NIKE site will no longer need a huge amount of water. The new process should save about 15 million gallons of water, McClinton said.
Sperberg said the Army will save energy in the near future through meters that are being installed on installations.
"We've started to deploy a pretty robust meter system," he said. "Pretty soon we're going to be able to benchmark facilities on the installation and start being able to identify the users on the installation that are out of synch, out of line, out of tolerance, and start to measure usage across barracks, across headquarters, across the installation."
"Some places are already doing this," Sperberg said, "where they publish the bad boys on the energy list in the newspaper."
American culture is based on high-tech energy consumption, he said.
"We've got to figure out a way to bring responsibility and accountability" on energy use, Sperberg said.
| Date Taken: | 03.10.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 03.18.2015 15:45 |
| Story ID: | 157401 |
| Location: | ARLINGTON, MD, US |
| Web Views: | 65 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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