The Department of Defense has awarded $500,000 to the Iowa Energy Center, Iowa Army National Guard and Taylor Engineering to demonstrate energy efficient strategies at five National Guard facilities.
Funding comes from the DOD’s Environmental Security Technology Certification Program, which harnesses the latest science and technology to demonstrate and commercialize innovative, cost-effective, and sustainable solutions. Nationwide, only ten water and energy projects were awarded among the 21 selected for full proposal evaluation.
The project will take the already developed Tiered Trim and Respond strategy – a ventilation system control strategy that more effectively regulates room temperature than traditional building control methods – and demonstrate its effectiveness on reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in selected IAARNG facilities (see map).
The project will be conducted in the following Iowa facilities:
- Joint Forces Headquarters/STARC Armory at Camp Dodge
- Muscatine Armed Forces Reserve Center
- Waterloo Army Aviation Support Facility
- Boone Armory
- Des Moines Military Entrance Processing Station
The set of facilities was selected for the wide variation in size, function, and HVAC systems in use.
The initial TRR method research was developed through a two-year Iowa Energy Center grant awarded in 2009 to Ron Nelson, former Iowa State University professor of mechanical engineering, and his graduate student, Brian Housholder. The method was studied at the Iowa Energy Center’s Energy Resource Station in Ankeny, Iowa, and successfully implemented at Iowa State University’s Hixon-Lied building in Ames. In 2011, the strategy was published as public information in the Iowa Energy Center final project report.
In September, electrical power management products firm Power Analytics Corporation won a contract to operate a secure cluster of microgrids at three San Diego, Calif.-area naval bases funded by the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program. Under the contract, Power Analytics’ Paladin software will monitor, control and optimize the three geographically separated microgrids, providing the military with what the company says is its first comprehensive, real time view of the status of its critical power systems across multiple bases.
