FORT CARSON — The barrel-like oven transforming wood chips into electricity with a Ford auto engine hardly seems like battlefield equipment, but Army officials say it may save lives.
The pilot plant, built by Littleton-based Community Power Corp., is part of the “net zero” project that aims to make this base energy independent.
The base — whose 26,000 troops and their families make it Colorado’s 14th-largest city — is ground zero for the Army’s effort to reduce energy and water use and cut waste.
The only other base in the country given a complete net-zero mandate is Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas.
“What this program is about is security — economic security, environmental security and national security,” said Vince Guthrie, Fort Carson’s utilities program manager.
The base’s goal is to cut energy demand 30 percent from 2003 levels by 2015 and to produce all the energy it uses in 2020, Guthrie said.
Across Fort Carson, solar panels are sprouting, with units already generating 3 megawatts, which is enough to power 800 homes on the base.
New buildings — 54 so far — are built to national energy-efficiency standards, and electric trucks are rolling along the roads.
“When it comes to energy, they are doing some very cool stuff at Fort Carson,” said Jeff Dominick, who works on defense-related energy issues at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
NREL is working with 60 Department of Defense installations, including Fort Carson. It’s part of a push by the department to make the military more energy efficient and independent.
In 2010, the department spent $15.1 billion on energy, with about $10 billion going to fuel for jets and ships. Military installations used $4 billion in energy, with 64 percent of that for electricity.
“It is a budget issue and it is a strategic issue,” said Park Haney, deputy director of the Army’s western regional environmental and energy office.
In 2010, there were 788 energy programs underway at a cost of $898 million, according to the Department of Defense Annual Energy Management Report.
Among the projects are ones searching for new power sources, ranging from flexible solar panels that can be folded and packed to Community Power’s “bioenergy system.”
Experimentation is a long-standing part of the military, said NREL’s Dominick.
The armed forces, for example, were early funders and adopters of technologies such as the Global Positioning System and the Internet.
Not everyone a fan of efforts
To be sure, not all experiments may pan out — the Fort Carson electric trucks are having problems on hills — and not everyone is a fan.
In February, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus outlined the Pentagon’s alternative-fuels plan, only to be rebuffed by Rep. Randy Forbes, a Virginia Republican.
“You’re not the secretary of energy; you’re the secretary of the Navy,” Forbes told Mabus.
At Fort Carson, the process begins with something more mundane than futuristic technologies or national politics. It starts with the monthly electricity bill.
The base pays about $2 million a month to Colorado Springs Utilities.
“That’s what I’m looking at every month,” Fort Carson’s Guthrie said. “How can we reduce that?”
To begin to trim the bill, the base has taken steps both basic and exotic, including:
• A $900,000 contract with Colorado Lighting Co. to retrofit and replace lighting systems.
• A high-efficiency cooling system at the events center, developed by Denver-based Coolerado Corp.
• A contract with Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls Inc., an energy engineering company, to find ways to cut energy use up to 15 percent. Johnson will be paid out of the energy savings.
• A $7 million “smart grid” project that will enable the base to continue to power critical operations even if there is a long-term electrical outage.
A Defense Department report noted that dependence on outside power supplies leaves military installations “vulnerable” to natural disasters and cyber-attacks.
As for the water and waste portions of the net-zero mandate, the base is recycling about 45 percent of its waste. Between 2007 and 2011, it cut water use 9.4 percent, to 53 gallons per square foot.
The goal is to continue reducing water consumption 2 percent a year and to find ways to boost the recycling rate, Guthrie said.
Fort Carson also is testing two cutting-edge energy technologies that could have applications at forward operating bases that support tactical operations.
By the rifle range, an Infinia Corp. “power dish” is providing heat and 3 megawatts of electricity to nearby offices. Infinia, a startup in Kennewick, Wash., is working with Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico to perfect the Stirling engine technology.
“Very fortunate to be selected”
Community Power, which has been working on its bioenergy system with the military and NREL for five years, has received $8 million in competitive grants from the Army.
“We feel very fortunate to be selected,” said Rob Walt, the company’s vice president.
The 100-kilowatt Community Power pilot plant at Fort Carson is operating on wood chips. The company just built a unit for Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii that will run on commissary waste, Walt said.
Last year, a unit was transported to Iraq to see how it would run in the desert.
“The biggest issue was keeping sand out of the system, because at these operating temperatures, it turned to glass,” said Carl Peterson, a Community Power engineer.
Here’s where it gets back to saving lives.
Getting a system like the bioenergy plant to forward positions could displace 80 percent of the diesel fuel needed, Peterson said.
In Afghanistan, 70 percent of the supplies that convoys carry to troops is fuel and water, Haney said, and for every 46 convoys, there is one fatality.
“Cut the number of convoys,” Haney said, “and you save lives.”
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912 or mjaffe@denverpost.com
