THE ENERGY CIRCUIT


concern that cyberattacks could take down the nation’s electrical grid—have grown in intensity and unpredictability, said Amanda Simpson, executive director of the U.S. Army Office of Energy Initia- tives (OEI), which transitioned from the Energy Initiatives Task Force in October 2014. So OEI is working on a variety of renewable energy projects with industry to help reduce the risk to installations’ energy supplies and reduce the Army’s energy footprint at the same time.


IN THE MARKET FOR RENEWABLES


COL Robert J. Ruch, commander of the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, AL, leads the Nov. 13, 2014, pre-proposal meeting for Redstone Arsenal’s Renewable CHP project. (Photo by Julia Bobick, U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville)


OEI, she said, is “set up like a little mini-PEO [program executive office], being that we have dozens of projects under development in various stages, but in every case we’re doing third-party financing, working with the installations to leverage renewables to bring energy security to our installations.” Before leading OEI, Simpson was special assis- tant to the Army acquisition executive, the Hon. Heidi Shyu, and acted as her principal adviser.


WORKING WITH INDUSTRY ON PROJECTS TO PROVIDE ENERGY JUST MAKES SENSE, GIVEN THAT THE ARMY IS ALREADY BUYING POWER FROM INDUSTRY.


magazine reached out to learn more, and here’s what we learned from Army orga- nizations near and far.


SMART POWER, SMART PARTNERSHIPS A fourfold increase in power interrup- tions on Army installations over the last 10 years has accelerated the Army’s efforts to get smarter—much smarter—about how it acquires the energy that powers its facilities. Te interruptions occurred as a result of such events as Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy and the tornadoes that tear across the country’s midsection each year, including the 2011 tornadoes that knocked out power to Redstone Arsenal, AL, for nine days.


Such disruptions, disasters and other threats to Army operations—including the attempted sabotage of a substation in San Jose, CA, in 2013 and the looming


50 Army AL&T Magazine January–March 2015


Reducing the energy footprint and bring- ing generation capability within the fence line increases the security of the installa- tions, Simpson said. And working with industry on projects to provide energy just makes sense, given that the Army is already buying power from industry.


“We’re just getting our first plants online. We have a dozen projects that are either actively under construction or currently somewhere in the procurement cycle,” she said. “Te first project that was under construction is at Fort Huachuca [AZ]. Tey go operational this month [Decem- ber 2014]. It’s a solar array. It will, over the course of the year, provide 25 percent of the power to Fort Huachuca, but it’s owned and operated by Tucson Electric Power, which has been providing electric- ity to the fort for 73 years. It’s amazing to see almost 100 acres of solar panels.”


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