The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is committed to energy efficiency and sustainability.
That’s the first thing that Danny Gore, energy program manager for the Coast Guard, wants you to know. He says it’s in the charter of the organization, and he, along with all of the other Coast Guard personnel with energy in their titles, are ready to follow through toward this goal.
“Environmental stewardship is key to everything we do,” Gore says. “It comes from the top — when [former] Admiral Thad Allen wrote up the management strategy, stewardship played an important role in its development. That’s what we try to live by in Puerto Rico.”
The Challenge
Although the impetus for increasing the amount of solar energy used at the Coast Guard facilities came internally, there are also outside pressures on the service to go green, Gore says. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that 5% of the electricity used on bases had to be tied to renewable power, growing to 7.5% in 2013. The USCG is ahead of schedule and generates 9% of its energy from renewables — 5% direct distribution and 4% from renewable energy credits (REC).
When it came to the buildings at its Puerto Rican Air Station Borinquen, however, it was behind the curve. The USCG needed to change its aging facilities to energy-efficient buildings at the air station through both active energy production and energy conservation measures.
There are 411 residences on the base and 737 residents. Gore says some of the residences were considered uninhabitable because they were outdated. In fact, the majority of the homes didn’t have central air conditioning, a virtual requirement in the tropical environment of Puerto Rico.
“We had to retrofit a lot of dilapidated buildings that were not in good shape before,” Gore says. “On top of that we wanted to modernize the electric system and get central air conditioning for all the units. That would be a huge improvement in the quality of life for our servicemen and their families.”
Gore says the leaders at the base looked at other operations within the USCG and decided that based on other experiences, solar power was the way to go to achieve all of its goals. The biggest challenge once that decision was made was to figure out who could handle such a large project at a reasonable cost.
“We went through a rigorous selection process,” Gore says. “One of the other challenges we faced was the tight schedule that we had to put it all together.”
The Solution
In the end, the contract for the work was awarded to Schneider Electric for $50 million. Kevin Vaughn, program manager, Federal Energy Solutions, for Schneider Electric’s Buildings Business, says the most challenging aspect of the project from his company’s perspective was the timeline.
“After we went through the selection process, we started collaborating with the people at the USCG, but we had to work fast,” Vaughn says. “To maximize a grant from the Treasury Department that would have funded the project, we had to meet two incredibly tight deadlines. From the time our bid was selected to time we had to get the work under way was nine months.”
The secondary challenge was how to finance the project, Gore says. There are three ways of financing projects for the USCG. One is the Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPC). Under these types of agreements, the USCG takes out a mortgage on the equipment and pays it off over time.
The second type of agreement is a Utility Energy Savings Contract (UESC), which mirrors the ESPC except that the agreement is with a utility as opposed to purchasing the equipment from a third party.
Lastly, the third type of financing is a Power Purchase Agreement, in which a third party comes on to the base, erects that array and then sells the energy back to the USCG.
To make the financing for the Puerto Rican project work, Schneider and the USCG came up with a combination of two funding mechanisms — the ESPC and the PPA. Once the funding was in place, the project was able to get under way.
The Outcome
By the time the Puerto Rico installation is done in April 2012, it will be nearly 3 mW in size, making it the largest solar installation in the Coast Guard’s portfolio of renewable energy projects. Gore says it will allow the base to exceed its statutory obligations, pay less for electricity and maintain its reputation for being forward-thinking in its approach to energy production.
Schneider Electric is constructing 300 solar photovoltaic systems on the facilities, which will result in guaranteed production of more than 4 million kilowatt-hours per year. The photovoltaic electricity, combined with the new cool roofs that will reduce the annual cooling load of the buildings by 3.9 billion BTUs, will result in an overall reduction in utility-purchased electricity by an estimated 40%.
Vaughn says the importance of the energy security that the new system offers can’t be underestimated. When Hurricane Irene sloshed its way through Puerto Rico in August, most of the island’s electricity was out, but the Coast Guard station was able to continue its operations with little to no interruption.
“This new system will help the energy stability of the base,” Vaughn says. “Schneider is more than 50 percent done with the PV systems and the new roofs, and then we’ll move on to improving the energy efficiency of the entire system.”
Gore says the partnerships between the USCG and Schneider Electric has done exactly what the Coast Guard has been doing for 221 years — leading, not following.
“We want to set the standard for environmental sustainability for all the other federal agencies to follow,” Gore says. “This mutually beneficial agreement with Schneider will help us continue our leadership in this area.” SPW
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