US Defense Dept. enlists Xendee to streamline military microgrid design
By now, it’s well known that the US Department of Defense (DOD) and the US military are investing heavily in microgrid technology. Earlier this year, the Army announced it would build a microgrid at each of its bases worldwide by 2035. In May, the Navy and Marine Corps made similar commitments.
In its latest move, the DOD has enlisted Xendee to provide military installations with its Microgrid Decision Support System as part of its Environmental Security Technology Certification Program.
The goal is to deploy an integrated and scalable microgrid modeling system across the DOD that both reduces design time and cuts engineering expenses.
Successful demonstrations completed
Xendee recently demonstrated its platform at three DOD installations — Naval Submarine Base (NSB) Kings Bay in Georgia, US Army Garrison (USAG) Bavaria in Germany, and the Naval Base San Diego in California.
In these demonstration cases, the software was used to address specific mandates for each microgrid installation as dictated by each base’s priorities.
The Xendee platform assessed solar, battery, storage, diesel generators, heat pumps, and combined heat and power engines. It was also used to evaluate cable and transformer upgrades. Data gathered from the assessment was then used to streamline the microgrid design and implementation process.
At NSB Kings Bay, the software was used to evaluate the feasibility, return and potential alternatives for ongoing base upgrades. At USAG Bavaria, the software was tasked with optimizing investment, placement, dispatch, financial analysis and power flow engineering. Naval Base San Diego demonstrated the cost and emissions benefits of an on-site microgrid as compared to running new cabling to a building.
The average cost to complete even the most complex modeling solutions was less than 1% of total project costs, according to Xendee.
“Through Xendee's ability to streamline the microgrid design process while cutting costs and increasing efficiency, these three site demonstrations confirm the value that Xendee's tool can offer to a military audience," said Michael Stadler, CTO and co-founder of Xendee.
Training curriculum also developed
Along with its partner, Arizona State University, Xendee also developed a specialized training curriculum for service members using the software.
“Our primary objective was to train uniformed and civilian military personnel on a standardized, repeatable process for building and interpreting microgrid models,” said Nathan Johnson, associate professor in The Polytechnic School at Arizona State University and director of the Laboratory for Energy and Power Solutions.
Johnson explained that the training program is mapped to military job codes, which will create a “pipeline for training and deploying DOD certified users at scale.”
Xendee microgrid modeling platform evolves
In September, Xendee announced that it had integrated UtilityAPI to offer engineers more accurate load data and emissions profiles. It also announced a new multinode feature that allows users to connect 25 different technologies when designing utility-scale and other large format microgrids.
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