America's North Shore Journal

In an effort to cre­ate a green envi­ron­ment, coali­tion forces are propos­ing to the Iraqis to build a reusable energy sys­tem with a com­bi­na­tion wind tur­bine power plant and solar pan­els to sup­port Iraqi bor­der fort out­post around the coun­try. This will pro­vide a reli­able power source to the watch tower and it would require min­i­mal logis­ti­cal chain to sup­port the Iraqi Secu­rity Forces.

Multi-National Secu­rity Tran­si­tion Com­mand – Iraq, J7 Engi­neer­ing is devel­op­ing a con­cept to uti­lize renew­able energy for future secu­rity of Iraq’s bor­der, and using solar energy as a source of power for all the bor­der out­posts is a step in the right direc­tion. The pro­posed loca­tion for the test project is the Al Shiha Out­post South; it was recently built by the Gov­ern­ment of Iraq and is in excel­lent con­di­tion. The site has been pre­vi­ously wired, but it doesn’t have a power source installed. This loca­tion is acces­si­ble for trucks and can eas­ily be mon­i­tored from COP Shocker, Zur­batiyah, Iraq.

The costs asso­ci­ated with com­plet­ing this project is $220K—this includes site prep, wiring of the tower, power con­trol­ling, inverter and bat­ter­ies. Solar pan­els and con­trollers will be part of the cost com­po­nent, with the major­ity of fund­ing being allo­cated for mobi­liza­tion, design, profit and Golf Region Dis­trict Army Corps of Engi­neers fees.

This wind tur­bine is the most eco­nom­i­cal option for the Iraqis as a power source because it pro­vides 2,000 watts of energy with aver­age wind above 14 mph, 24 hours a day with­out a gen­er­a­tor or asso­ci­ated logis­tics. Solar pan­els will also be used because the loca­tion can pro­vide 6 hours of full sun­light a day. There will be a portable room heater avail­able for the win­ter months and equip­ment for cool­ing of elec­tron­ics for the sum­mer months. The bat­ter­ies will pro­vide backup power to the plant for 10 hours with no wind, and longer if power usage is con­served. Cur­rently, they use car bat­ter­ies pri­mar­ily to keep the radios oper­a­tional. The inspec­tion and main­te­nance on the wind tur­bine will occur yearly, with peri­odic inspec­tions of the bat­ter­ies, ter­mi­nal lugs and other elec­tronic devices used to assist in its oper­a­tion. For opti­mal per­for­mance, the sys­tem should be kept in a clean, dry space between 50 and 80 degrees fahrenheit.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col Tom Williams, Ph.D, P.E. Plan­ning, MNSTC-I stated, “MNSTC-I’s role is to build the infra­struc­ture so the Depart­ment of Bor­der Enforce­ment can achieve their mis­sion of pro­tect­ing the bor­ders. We are push­ing to com­plete this project with ISF funds by the end of this fis­cal year so we can hand over the con­cept to the GoI for their con­sid­er­ar­tion and pos­si­ble imple­men­ta­tion. This is a step towards the United States and Iraq meet­ing the require­ments of the Secu­rity Agremment."

MNF-I