Photo By Staff Sgt. Richard Wrigley | Brig. Gen. Jim Blackburn, commander, Task Force Marne, 3rd Infantry Division, speaks...... read more read more
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FORT STEWART, Ga. - Fort Stewart recently won gold when it was officially declared the best installation in the Army and is now on the cutting edge of harvesting gold from the skies.
In fact, Fort Stewart is on its way to become one of the largest producers of renewable solar energy within the state of Georgia, and is also slated to become the military installation producing the largest amount of renewable energy throughout the Department of Defense.
The U.S. Army and Georgia Power, in collaboration with the General Services Administration, the Georgia Public Service Commission, and the U.S. Army Office of Energy Initiatives have broke ground on one-third of the Army-Georgia 3x30 endeavor here, May 15.
According to Georgia Power’s website, the 3x30 project refers to three separate solar generation arrays being built by Georgia Power at Fort Stewart, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon, the three major U.S. Army installations within the state.
The solar farms are expected to be capable of producing roughly 30 megawatts of electricity each. After their estimated time of completion around the end of 2016, the solar arrays are expected to be the largest of their kind on any Department of Defense installation.
This power isn’t just for the Army though. The generated power will flow to Georgia Power, and then back out to all their consumers, on and off post.
“This is not just going to benefit Fort Stewart…this is really about everybody who consumes through Georgia Power,” said Brig. Gen. Jim Blackburn, commander, Task Force Marne, 3rd Infantry Division, as he spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony.
While the facilities will indeed do much to help the residents of Georgia, they will also go a long way to help the Army achieve a mandate set forth by the president of the United States.
“The president of the United States challenged the United States Army [in generating] one gigawatt of renewable energy from throughout the Army installations by the year 2025, and this one step…will go along way in making that happen,” said Blackburn. “The Army always accomplishes its mission, and this will be no different in our pursuit here.”
The ceremony started with Blackburn speaking on behalf of Fort Stewart and the Army; however throughout the affair, there were five more speakers, and the ceremony concluded with seven people each bearing seven shovels in order to symbolically “break ground” on the project here at Fort Stewart.
“This doesn’t [normally] happen, this truly is a project that’s been raised by a village,” Blackburn said as he explained just how many actors were involved in making this event possible.
Just the number of people involved in the ceremony is an indicator of the number of organizations that had to come together to make something of this nature come to fruition.
This fact that was not lost on Richard Kidd, deputy assistant secretary of the Army (energy and sustainability), who also spoke at the Fort Stewart solar array groundbreaking ceremony.
“Local community, public entities, the utilities, the elected officials, [they all came] together to take on the hard issues and the tough problems; that is what we as Americans have always done, and we need to do it around this issue.”
Kidd also spoke at length about what this means for the future of both the Nation and the environment.
“If our country doesn’t change our carbon emissions projections, there is going to be no installation that is more adversely affected than right here at Fort Stewart,” Kidd asserted. “We have to come together as a nation, to address this issue not for us but the people that are going to follow us - now is the time to act.”
Now is indeed the time to act, a fact which Chuck Eaton, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, aptly pointed out when he had a chance to address those in attendance.
“Solar has come a long way … 10 years ago if someone came into my office and wanted to talk about solar [power], they were wearing Birkenstocks, now we have boots and camouflage coming in to talk about it,” said Eaton. “It took a little bit of work … it was definitely a collaboration … and I understand it has become a model for the rest of the country.
“This was a win-win for sure.”
Other contributors to this story include Georgia Power at: http://www.georgiapower.com/about-energy/energy-sources/solar/solar-projects/3x30.cshtml
| Date Taken: | 05.19.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 05.19.2015 09:20 |
| Story ID: | 163756 |
| Location: | FORT STEWART, GA, US |
| Web Views: | 133 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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