NREL's Fort Renewable Shows Benefits of Batteries, Microgrids for Military and Beyond

Source: · T&D WORLD · | July 29, 2021

Early-stage companies used microgrid validations at NREL to size-up commercial systems — the results have high-impact lessons for the larger grid.

Source: T&D World

High winds, a beaming sun, a remote landscape — the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Flatirons Campus might be a familiar environment to military service members. Here at "Fort Renewable," down a dirt road from the main research campus, military Quonset huts are dispersed among energy assets like solar photovoltaics (PV) and battery storage.

Compared to a real military base, the Fort Renewable setup is not so much forward-operating as forward-thinking, with its own critical mission: to design high-renewable systems for secure applications. With unique cyber and physical capabilities, the NREL's microgrid research platform is the scene of large-scale grid demonstrations that are helping the military, microgrid, and energy storage industries transition past technical barriers toward extreme renewable integration.

A Competition to Create Quality Microgrids

Microgrids are nothing new to the military and especially nothing new for the NREL–Department of Defense (DOD) collaborations. But as new threats emerge on energy systems — generally cyber and environmental — the DOD is now looking to bolster its backup power with battery storage, in place of a current preference for diesel generators.