STAR-TIDE's Mobile, Sustainable Power Solutions

Inspired in part by RMI's Amory Lovins, this is worth learning about, so please bear with me. Dr. Linton Wells, NDU Transformational Chair and Distinguished Fellow, and former Undersecretary of Defense for NII, briefed a small group of bloggers on Wednesday about an ambitious (and ambitiously named) program called STAR-TIDES. I'll spell it out for you. TIDES = Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support. And TIDES is just one small part of a larger intiative called STAR, which = Sustainable Technologies, Accelerated Research. Besides NDU, other orgs involved on the US side include OSD and JFCOM. And yes there are other sides, because this program isn't just international, it's also cross service, cross agency (e.g., DOD, DHS) and cross cultural.

The energy aspect comes into play in its capacity to deploy in a variety of often-sustainable (e.g., solar, wind) mobile power configurations (small, medium, large) into stressed environments to help out folks in need. I'll be posting on this again, but for more info now please see the program's web site here, and if you want something more concrete, visit Fort McNair today or the Pentagon courtyard next week, where demonstration units on display. Key mobile power participants include Solar Stik and SkyBuilt Power.

Photo courtesy of Solar Stik

Elegant HVAC Retrofit Solution Could Save Bases and FOBs Tons of Energy

Here's a new company - PaceControls - I recently spoke with who have something DOD could use to save 10 - 25% on heating and cooling bills across the board. And yet they haven't spent much time approaching the military with their solutions because trying to find the right DOD doors to knock on can be a harrowing experience, especially when there are other more accessible clients. Candidate programs that come to mind are the Army RDECOM's HI-Power, OSD & JFCOM's STAR-TIDES, and every DOD base charged with reducing its energy consumption each year (uh, that would be all of them). 

Complex New Energy Landscape for DOD R&D

Food for thought: Imagine you're in charge of DARPA or the Office of Naval Research (ONR), or the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) or Army's Research, Development & Engineering Command (RDECOM), and you've been tasked by your service's secretary or the SECDEF to investigate new technologies that can be implemented swiftly to improve DOD's energy posture. Thanks to Greentechmedia for providing a detailed, interactive chart that lets you drill down to examples in each category.

Even with a generous staff of highly competent tech directors and research scientists, do you think you and your team would be able to provide uniformly deep coverage on all of these potentially promising vectors? My point is: these orgs are doing great and important work, and it's incumbent on the rest of the government, industry and academia to give them all the help they can muster.

Russia and Venezuela Teaming on Weapons and Energy

There's no good news here, just bad and ugly. But it pays to know what's going on elsewhere in the world when pondering DOD's next energy steps. Recent reports are that Putin and Chavez are getting very cozy, and formulating agreements on oil for Gazprom in Venezuela and nuclear tech transfer too. For energy purposes only, of course. 

As with a previous post on Russian actions in Georgia, these moves not only affect DOD by potentially altering global energy markets, they also put Venezuela further in the crosshairs of DOD warfighting planners. Russia is pulling our strings because it knows US forces are spread mighty thin, and it's newfound oil and gas wealth is making it feel like a superpower again. This is getting pretty close to home.

Air Force "Green"?

As this article from early 2008 shows, the Air Force is kicking butt in renewable energy deployments on its bases, and this is great. But when it comes to its enthusiasm for so-called "Green Fuels", it's not such a clear winner. One of my DOD energy mentors, Dr. Sohbet Karbuz has just published a post where he gives all the different synth fuel players and approaches some time. But it's what he says at the bottom of his post that most closely parallels what I've been getting from the AF to date. He's been covering AF synth fuel work for some time, and has this to say re: the current outlook:

My thoughts on green fuels have not changed: They are expensive, not that green, don't improve USAF mission capability, add extra burden to taxpayers, but are good business for the military-industry complex.

I'm totally in favor of improving the non foreign supply of fuels to US war fighters in general, and the AF in particular. But so much AF activity at present seems almost like busy work. Is there a roadmap available that shows the AF building on what it's learning to deliver truly cleaner, cost competitive fuels on a scale that makes a difference? If so, I'd like to see it.

DOD Photo courtesy of Jim Gordon @ Flickr

DOE and Zero Energy Buildings (ZEBs) Awards

Per January 2007's Executive Order 13423, every DOD base is under the gun for reducing its energy costs every year to reach a 30% reduction by 2015. This Ars Technica article describes recent DOE NREL awards for companies making big strides to reach ZEB standards as soon as possible. Solar is called out, and one technology that isn't (urban or building-mounted wind energy) is covered by my friend builder Chris here. Using just the Army's structures for example, if the efficiency of its 50,000 housing units and nearly 1 billion square feet of buildings could be improved just a little, you'd be talking humungous cost savings. 

All the (Electric) Ships at Sea

This National Defense Magazine article from late last year describes the ambitious R&D being conducted by ONR and NAVSEA to substantially improve the way USN ships are powered. According to ONR's John Pazik, the org has created five focus areas for researching advanced naval power for all-electric ships:

• power generation
  
• distribution and control
  
• energy storage
  
• heat transfer and thermal management
  
• motors and actuators

While some of the technologies will be difficult to master (e.g., fuel cells, capacitors, solar power, alternative fuels, etc.) I have no doubt they'll achieve success over time. What I have less confidence about is whether we'll be able to procure them in significant numbers in our lifetimes. Has anyone noticed that our ability to design, buy and build new ships is just about broken? Let's fix that soon, OK? We've got some fuel efficient ships to launch.

Image courtesy of Northrop Grumman