EEI, US Army to develop best practices for on-base grid resilience

The U.S. military has been an active developer of microgrids and other energy efficiency improvements to its bases worldwide and is now joining forces with the nation’s major utilities to further advance the program.

The U.S. Department of the Army and Edison Electric Institute (EEI) announced in late June that they had recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop a set of best practices that will guide future investments by both the Army and its civilian electric companies that will protect military installations in the United States against physical and cyber threats to their power supplies.

“Our member electric companies have a longstanding relationship with our nation’s military and know how essential electricity is to national defense,” said EEI President Tom Kuhn. “Through this MOU, we will establish best practices for energy resilience planning and will continue to make investments in critical energy infrastructure that will directly benefit all of our customers, including the Army.”

Along with the other branches of the U.S. armed forces, the Army has been an enthusiastic proponent of reducing its energy costs while also developing on-base solar power, energy storage, and other efficiency measures to keep the lights on at critical facilities should their civilian energy provider be knocked offline. The partnership with EEI will help the Army collaborate with their utilities on joint planning for regional grid resilience and other measures that will benefit military installations and the surrounding community. EEI said its member utilities service around 300 military installations around the country.

According to the MOU, the Army’s goal is to develop the capability for an individual base to sustain both energy and water needs for a minimum of two weeks. The project has taken on added urgency recently due to a high-profile series of ransomware attacks earlier this year involving the Colonial Pipeline and other major U.S. companies. “We have all witnessed recent events that highlight the risks for modern society when the grid goes down,” said Jack Surash, the senior official who has been performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy, and Environment. “The need to be resilient is now. Our collaborations with EEI will improve the Army’s mission readiness and result in more resilient installations throughout the United States.”

The MOU forms a task force of military officials and EEI representatives to explore pilot projects involving individual bases and the utilities that serve them. The goals and guidelines of the projects will be established outside the MOU parameters. The EEI team will provide most of the guidance for the project, with the Army providing access to key personnel and distributing the final best-practices documents to its various bases and commands.

“We welcome the opportunity to work with all branches of the U.S. military to provide them with the affordable, reliable, secure, and resilient clean energy needed to protect our country each day,” Kuhn said.