Army engineers are evaluating hundreds of construction projects to ensure that they meet “green” building standards, officials said.
The goal is to apply the LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design) rating system on all new construction — including barracks and office buildings — at U.S.-based Army installations, said Bob Sperberg, chief of facilities policy at the office of the Army assistant chief of staff for installation management.
In 2009, the designs of more than 900 buildings will be assessed according to LEED criteria, Sperberg said.
One major goal is to reduce electricity use, he said. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires federal buildings — including military facilities — to be 30 percent more energy efficient than their commercial counterparts.
Congress also mandated in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act that the military reduce its overall energy use by 3 percent per year and 30 percent during the next 10 years.
Sperberg said that since these efforts started in 2006, the service has achieved reductions of 10.4 percent.
The Army in October established a senior energy council that will work with the private sector to develop power-saving initiatives. The council will focus first on bases, hospitals and ammunition depots, said Paul Bollinger, deputy assistant to the secretary of the Army for energy and partnerships.
Among the efforts is the construction of two solar power facilities near Fort Irwin, Calif., in the Mojave Desert. The two plants will each collect up to 250 megawatts of electricity, Bollinger said.
That will not only provide Fort Irwin with power — it requires 30 megawatts — but will also supply electricity to nearby civilian communities.
At Fort Carson, Co., the Army has built a 12-acre solar power site to supply electricity to the entire post. Similar projects are under way at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Bollinger said the Army’s strategy is not “one size fits all,” as bases will adopt different solutions depending on their location. Those in sunny regions — nearly 40 in the United States — will likely tap solar power. Those in the Midwest will utilize wind power. And those near nuclear plants may use nuclear power, he said.
For deployed units, the service is eyeing new technologies such as “micro grids” — electric grids that link many generators and cause some to shut down when not in use. The technology could reduce consumption by up to 30 percent, and the service will test the concept at Fort Sill, Okla., this year, using funding from the stimulus package, Bollinger said.
The Army is reaching out to the private sector for heating and cooling innovations. Vic Berger, a technologist at CDW Government Inc., said the military spends too much money on air conditioning to cool data centers that house computer servers. Those AC units create huge amounts of heat exhaust. This is a wasteful process, Berger said. In the winter, heat from the servers could be harnessed to warm surrounding rooms with a heat pump. Buildings could also use the pump to bring ambient air into the data center and cool the machines.
At Fort Lewis, Wash., CDW installed an air conditioning system that can sense the temperature outside the building. In the winter, fans cool the center with air from outside. The system can also sense when servers need more cooling and can adjust its output accordingly.
Tim Todd, the base’s data center manager, consolidated 86 servers into 14 using “VMware virtualization software” in order to reduce the amount of air conditioning needed. That cut the center’s electricity consumption by a quarter.
Other military bases have installed “smart switches.” The devices resemble ordinary surge protectors, but can detect whether a connected computer is idle — when the user leaves the office for the day, for example — based on the machine’s power draw. When that happens, it cuts off electricity to the computer and any connected printers and monitors.
Doug Patterson, vice president of Aitech Defense Systems, said energy-inefficient components in many PCs will be replaced with parts that draw less power from electrical systems. Advances in materials such as aluminum, graphite and carbon composite will make this possible, he said.
