By Ann Roosevelt
The Army has selected the team of Irwin Energy Security Partners LLC, and Acciona Solar Power to “develop, construct and manage the largest solar power project proposed to date” within the Defense Department, at Ft. Irwin, Calif.
“What we’re looking for is to have that sustained assured access to power to the installation, and energy security is the prime reason to pursue this project,” said Kevin Geiss, program director, Energy Security, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment, at a recent roundtable.
Geiss characterized energy security as providing a reliable source of power by utilizing renewable and alternative energy sources instead of a primary reliance on fossil fuel- derived energy. The solar project would also provide energy security because it offers resiliency in the face of the vulnerability of the electric grid, and because it is sustainable.
The Army energy security effort began about a year ago. The service is spending more than $1 billion on energy projects including nearly $700 million in Army energy stimulus funds, the service said.
The developer will construct approximately 500 megawatts (MW) of solar power at Ft. Irwin, and perhaps as much as 1,000 MW when the project is complete, Thomas Kretzschmar, senior program manager, Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District, said.
The next six months will see negotiations and due diligence with the developer to “site, scale, select technologies, provide for interconnection, do environmental due diligence, and ultimately execute ground leases” that will allow developers to proceed to build in phases, Kretzschmar said.
“The first 500 megawatts are proposed to be constructed by 2022,” he said. A first phase is likely to be complete around 2014.
Ft. Irwin uses about 35 MW at peak, thus anything more would be sold off-base. The developer will construct and operate the facility without any Army commitment to buy the energy–at least initially.
The developer is at risk in this arrangement. However, there is a market for their energy in Southern California. “We happen to have sites that are adjacent to transmission lines of two utility companies so there’s a ready market for their electricity off post,” Kretzschmar said.
“The determination of whether we’re going to buy this energy, how we would buy it or how it would play into our energy security approach is essentially another item to be negotiated, not necessarily tied to this project or the lease itself, but it’s something we’re going to consider,” he said.
The project will be executed under an Enhanced Use Lease (EUL), a “fairly novel” concept run by the Army Corps of Engineers that aims to engage private sector developers to build and operate a variety of products on service real estate across the United States to complement service missions and generate revenue, Kretzschmar said.
“We try not to take cash, typically because cash when it’s received will go through the Treasury and will take a year or more to recycle back to the specific installation and they typically only get 50-percent of the rent,” he said.
As large as the state of Rhode Island, the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin is the only instrumented training facility in the world for force-on-force and live fire training of heavy brigade-size forces. It is also the Army’s premier heavy maneuver Combat Training Center.
The Army identified almost 14,000 acres of land at five sites in three geographically diverse areas for potential lease for renewable energy development. Three of the sites are located on Fort Irwin within the Goldstone Deep Space Listening facility. The other two sites are located along the installation’s perimeter.
The Clark-Acciona proposal features concentrated solar thermal and photovoltaic technology capabilities development at an industrial scale.
The Ft. Irwin Solar Energy EUL was identified as a pilot project by the Army Secretary in October 2008 as the Senior Energy Council was launched. The council is tasked to coordinate and promote energy security and policy for the service.