Military microgrids: a journey

Phil Carson | Jan 17, 2011

 

In Friday's column, "The Military 'Gets' Smart Grid," I posited that the U.S. military's embrace of energy efficiency, distributed generation and microgrids had an urgency that should inspire the private sector.

As I read further, it became clear that the military has made a journey of discovery to realize microgrid's benefits. That journey has lots to do with the development of a more reliable smart grid. And these observations are important for me to make for our readers, given my suggestion last week that the private sector should look to the military for a sense of urgency.

A thumbnail history: The Department of Defense (DoD) Reform Initiative Directive #49, signed in 1998, called for privatizing military utility systems, stating that "the DRI's objective is to get DoD out of the business of owning ... and operating utility systems." Exemptions would be made for security reasons and where privatization was "uneconomical."

One 2005 report on the Navy's efforts to comply, declassified last year, raised issues that continue to resonate. (Thanks to reader Bill Pentland, senior energy systems analyst, Pace Energy & Climate Center, for that report.) The report noted that thorough analysis had not preceded the order and that after seven years, the Navy concluded that only one-quarter of its utility systems were eligible for privatization.

"The utility privatization program has not evolved to reflect the post-9/11 security environment," the report said.

In fact, the Navy concluded that it should develop a comprehensive strategy for utility system management, including business case analysis for systems that could run during natural disaster or terrorist attack.

Several assumptions behind the original Directive #49 were shown to be tenuous or false. Those assumptions or "misperceptions" included that the private sector would be interested and that the private sector's infrastructure was more modern and reliable than the DoD's. Instead, the Navy Inspector General determined that:

"The North American energy grid is aging, increasingly fragile, buffeted by deregulation and market forces, stressed by relentlessly increasing demand, operating at near capacity with decreasing staffs and reliant on electronic components ... This strain is evident in recent, large-scale power failures.

"The data clearly indicates a decline in recapitalization, reliability and capacity in the commercial sector that cannot be ignored in the Navy's long-term energy strategy."

The report concluded:

"In the wake of the 9/11 attacks ... the [commercial power] system is not as well-maintained and capitalized as [originally] perceived [by DoD and] power failures could adversely affect the Navy mission. Privatizing ownership does nothing to mitigate these risks.

"[Conversely], development of more secure energy options could protect the Navy mission. One potentially effective and protective option for improving energy security is distributed generation. By distributing smaller generating capacity at multiple locations, the pitfalls of relying on a single remote source of power are greatly reduced."

"Navy priorities for energy management should be: energy security first; efficiency and economy second."

Therein lies the rub for my knee-jerk suggestion that the military's urgency should inform civilian efforts. While urgency may transfer, several key aspects of this military-civilian analogy do not.

First, the mantra of privatization cannot rule the federal government and its national defense obligations, for the obvious security reasons given. Second, the DoD had no sense of the civilian system's vulnerabilities, until the Navy (for one) examined the situation, and in the process discovered the vulnerabilities that today are driving the smart grid. Third, as the Navy discovered these vulnerabilities, it immediately focused on microgrids for reliability and, thus, security.

This embrace prompted analyst Brian Davis at Pike Research last fall to ask, in a blog, "Can the Military Save the Microgrid?" Davis lamented that he found general awareness of microgrids "underwhelming" and their benefits and value "largely overlooked." One reason: "islanding" goes against standard engineering protocol for safe operation of the electrical grid, a hurdle to be solved this year when the IEEE issues a guide for safe islanding when the central grid does down. Thus Davis' thesis that the DoD "saved the microgrid" until it could safely fit into the centralized grid's operations may turn out to be spot on.

Which brings us to my final point. The military's set of priorities—energy security first, efficiency and economy second—is a luxury unmatched in the private sector. In contrast, our power utilities—whether cooperative, municipal or investor-owned—must balance all three of those priorities simultaneously.

Perhaps, rather than suggest our private sector needs to adopt the military's sense of urgency, I should have suggested that the military try that juggling act.

Phil Carson
Editor-in-chief
Intelligent Utility Daily
pcarson@energycentral.com
303-228-4757