ARRAY INVESTING IN HYBRID POWER MICROGRIDS.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

* The Army is looking at new technology, such as microgrids, that can more efficiently power command posts and division tactical operations centers.

These systems can be in the 10s to 100s of kilowatts range, said Frank Bohn, an electronics engineer at the the Army's Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance--or C5ISR--Center. The center falls under the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command.

"What we're doing in this space is looking at not necessarily how to standardize a specific component, but how do we standardize the components that are being developed?" he said. "How do we standardize the communications between these systems? And how do we standardize the data so that way we can enable these things ... to work together to share power, optimize for fuel efficiency and resiliency, and how do we control that?"

The backbone of the concept is the tactical microgrid standard, or TMS, Bohn said. TMS is a data and communications standard that categorizes the various power devices that are located on a microgrid. These include different groups of systems such as equipment that produces power--like generators or solar panels--and items that consume power or store energy.

"Through the TMS, we're enabling these systems to communicate with one another, and then we're enabling microgrid controllers to come in [and] understand immediately and autonomously what these different systems are on the microgrid," Bohn said. "Then it's able to smartly, or intelligently, decide, 'This is how I'm going to use this system and optimize my microgrid.'"

The center is developing a hybrid power system, or HPS, microgrid, which it has been working on for about two and a half years, he said. It offers increased resiliency compared to the way that command posts and division tactical operations centers are traditionally powered, he noted.

"Right now, what they're using is primarily what they call spot generation," Bohn said. "This is a single generator or generators running in parallel to service a load."

These are typically oversized, and they have a second generator for redundancy in case a generator fails.

"What we're looking at doing with microgrids, and particularly hybrid microgrids, is increasing that resiliency so that way you don't have to run generators in parallel and you're immediately reducing ... fuel consumption, but still maintaining that resiliency," he said.

Joseph Vitale, an electronics...