Air Force Special Operations Command, headquartered at Hurlburt Field, Fla., is tackling grid stability issues through a self-funding $22.6 million Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) with Schneider Electric. The project is reported to save the Air Force $1.5 million annually during the 20-plus year contract.
A key upgrade in the ESPC’s scope was the installation of a 240kW solar power system, or a photovoltaic (PV) system, at Hurlburt’s central mainframe facility, one of AFSOC’s critical data centers. The new solar canopy charges a 265kWh battery energy storage system (BESS) with microgrid controls, ensuring uninterrupted operations and better resiliency for that mission-critical infrastructure.
“Solar is a great resource when the sun’s shining, but the sun doesn’t always shine. Generators are great if they start on the first or second crank, but they don’t always,” said Jeff Worley, Global Solutions Architect at Schneider Electric. “Having a battery that’s charged—whether it’s from utility power, solar power, or the generator—having a charged battery is an extra buffer of resiliency for that data center.”
Schneider Electric delivered six energy conservation measure upgrades to 377 buildings at Hurlburt. The updates include base-wide LED lighting changeouts, more resilient heating, ventilation, and cooling (HVAC) systems, duct sealing, enhanced energy management control systems (EMCS), and modernized building-level controllers and software that comply with today’s Air Force cybersecurity requirements.
“Those things were most of the energy savings, and there was a little component from the renewable energy on the solar and then the resiliency that they get from adding a battery to that solar,” Worley said. He added that the upgrades will also improve living conditions for Hurlburt Airmen and staff while minimizing the daily impact on the maintenance squadron.
Overall, the upgrades to Hurlburt’s power grid are designed to cut costs by 17.7 percent annually—savings that will be turned around to directly finance the project. The Department of Energy’s ESPC program helps publicly funded organizations and installations—like Air Force bases—reduce costs by paying for the improvements over the contract lifecycle of up to 25 years. The result is improved energy efficiency, operational resilience, and zero upfront costs for both the DOD and American taxpayers.
“A lot of Air Force bases have a lot of similar challenges. Not only do they have to reduce energy costs and operational costs, but they have to meet a lot of federal mandates for resiliency, renewable energy, and decarbonization,” said Dean Yobs, Head of Business Development at Schneider Electric. “We support the Air Force as the energy service company to help with those ESPC projects.”
The Hurlburt Field project is one of five ESPCs that Schneider Electric has executed with the Air Force in as many years. On each project, Schneider Electric has combined off-the-shelf technologies with custom strategies based on specific mission sets for each Air Force installation. Each project is centered on energy resilience, efficiency, and savings, as well as reinforcing operational readiness.
“Each installation has an operating budget, and that includes the cost of their utilities on an annual basis. So what we do is we come in and we save them energy on multiple different energy conservation measures on the base, and then the delta that we get out of those savings is used to pay back the loan for all those infrastructure improvements,” said Yobs. “It’s a great benefit to the base because obviously they’re able to meet their mission without having to come up with capital to do all this infrastructure improvement.”
Learn more about how Schneider Electric’s innovative solutions and energy performance contracts are posturing Air Force installations around the world for better resiliency and readiness.