The U.S. Army is about to start building a 500 megawatt solar thermal plant in the California desert. When it's done, the facility will be one of the largest renewable energy plants in the world. Which is kind of ironic, since the Army doesn’t pay all that much attention to climate change. Turns out, sustainable energy is safer, said Dr. Kevin Geiss, the program director for the project.

The Army today introduced the private developers, Clark Enterprises and a Spanish company called Acciona, that will build this gargantuan solar plant at Ft. Irwin, California. It's one of the military's primary locations to train for war. Right now, like many military bases, most of its energy comes from diesel generators—with long, vulnerable lines back to the fuel source. Screw the green movement, solar just makes sense.

In a bloggers' conference call today, Geiss explained:

One way to look at this is to just take a step back and not use the word renewable or alternative or anything and say okay, if we were going to try to get power and energy for our installations and we wanted to make sure that we have consistent access, that it’s affordable, that we would be at a low risk for disruption, that we would have decreased impact on the environment, I would say that our renewable and alternative energies would pop to the top of the list.

Ft. Irwin is prime location. There are 14,000 acres of land on the base, most of it unused unoccupied. Sites like this mean that the Army can push renewable energy development, said Geiss. All over the country, the Army has huge patches of land next to bases with a constant energy demand.

And Ft. Irwin has some bonus features. It’s right next to high capacity transmission lines, which means that later, the army can sell most of the excess energy to southern California. At peak, Ft. Irwin only needs 35 megawatts, leaving around 465 to shed.

But the Army also wants to distance Ft. Irwin from the grid if necessary, said Geiss. Developers will need to build a mechanism for the base to be completely energy autonomous in an emergency situation. That’s one of the major differences between Ft. Irwin and the Army’s active solar plant at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Nellis produces around 14 megawatts and remains tethered to the grid.

The solar plant at Ft. Irwin will require at least1.5 billion dollars total, and should be ready to crank electrons by 2022.

This will be a big break from the military past, said Geiss. “We have clear examples, at least in the past 100 years, where the lack of fuel has hindered military operations. What held Patton back in Germany was that Eisenhower was turning the fuel over to Montgomery.”

No longer. Like it or not, camo is the new green.

[Photo: USAF]

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