In an afternoon Bloggers’ Roundtable today, Dr. Kevin Geiss, Program Director, Energy Security, talked about the U.S. Army’s work in his area.

The Army was allotted about $1.5 billion in the recent Stimulus Bill. Of that, about $700 million was designated for energy related projects.

The Army’s goal is to have about 25-30% of its energy use, 1.5 gigawatts of energy, in renewable energy sources by 2017. That goal is separate from the reductions imposed on the Army, and all Federal agencies, by recent legislation.

At Army installations, the reduction in BTU’s is on target. With respect to the non-tactical vehicle fleet, Dr. Geiss felt that they were about half way to the target. The Army’s leasing of neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV’s), discussed in a BRT on January 12, 2009 and the intended acquisition of 502 hybrid sedans will help a great deal in that regard.

Tactical vehicles and combat installations are also being examined for energy savings and better use of existing energy sources.

Tactical vehicles such as tanks or personnel carriers have had system after system added with little regard to an overall design concept. Some vehicles have as little as two minutes of operating time when on their batteries alone. Geiss talked about vehicles that used nearly double the amount of energy for non-movement systems than for moving the vehicle. Cooling, communications and targeting systems all take power that was not designed into the original vehicle.

Combat bases, forward operating bases (FOB’s), currently have a private with a can of fuel as their control on energy use. In order to tie in renewable sources such as wind or solar, and to manage fuel used for energy, tactical grids will have to be created and managed. A computer will manage the grid, just as they do the electrical grid in the United States.

The big project for the Army is the proposed 500 megawatt solar farm at Fort Irwin in California. This is a massive project and Geiss announced that the developer would be named next week. The Army is looking for other partners, both in the private and public sector, for other such projects.