Solar energy a big ally for marines headed to war.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

A company of marines during a field exercise this summer used only solar energy to power the equipment in a command center for more than eight days.

Solar panels, solar-powered generators, solar-fueled heating and cooling: They are the shiny new tools that could free marines from the tyranny of fuel.

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The 150 marines of Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment--based at Camp Pendleton, Calif.--will soon deploy to Afghanistan with enough renewable energy technology that they may even leave behind many of their bulky gas-hogging generators and A/C powered batteries.

During training drills in August at 29 Palms, in the California desert, the 3/5 never turned on a generator to power its combat operations center.

In parallel to their combat training exercise, marines built at 29 Palms an experimental "forward operating base," or ExFOB, where 28 vendors brought renewable power generators, energy-efficient tents and water purification devices. A similar ExFOB was built in March at the Marine Corps' base at Quantico, Va.

After a week of tests at 29 Palms, officials narrowed it down to a handful of systems that India Company will take to war. If all goes well, green technology could soon proliferate throughout the Marine Corps, officials said.

The head of the Defense Department's operational energy programs, Sharon Burke, said the Marine Corps deserves praise for having "operationalized" technologies that have existed in labs but have not made it to the field. All the military services have developed green technology, "but tile marines came in at a leadership level and said, 'We're going to deploy this,'" Burke said in an interview. "That makes a big difference."

Every service now wants to do what the marines are doing, Burke said. "We're seeing it in their budgets," she said. "They're looking at how to use the technologies."

Marines also should be credited for focusing on educating troops on how to use the new equipment. "At most military bases, there are people who know how to work the generators and how to repair them, but running them efficiently is not part of their training," Burke said. "At 29 Palms, marines are being trained on the equipment," she said. "It's not as simple as putting up a poster in a tent that says 'Turn off your lights,'" she said. "We have to be thoughtful of what we ask from our deployed forces."

Among the technologies that the Marine Corps is deploying is a ground renewable expeditionary energy...