Arista Power, Inc. announced recently that it has received a contract valued at $625,000 from the U.S. Army to further develop an intelligent microgrid system in support of the Communications Electronics Research and Development Center’s (CERDEC’s) Command Power and Integration Renewable Energy for Distributed Under-Supplied Command Environments (REDUCE) program.
The contract builds on Arista Power’s successful Phase 1 and Phase 2 programs, for which Arista Power is the prime contractor. Under the next phase of the program, Arista Power will continue work towards the standardization of interfaces and development of an open communication protocol allowing for a plug-and-play environment to be leveraged by military microgrids deployed in forward operating bases. The contract calls for Arista Power to provide demonstrated capability of an advanced energy resource manager and the ability to utilize multiple energy storage systems of various chemistries within the same microgrid system.
Arista Power was selected as prime contractor to develop the U.S. Army’s intelligent microgrid in January 2012, and received a Phase Two development contract to further develop the system in October 2012.
A top priority for the army is the availability of adequate power in remote locations to run all the equipment necessary to fight a war and maintain the quality of life for soldiers at these locations. Because a majority of the power used at these locations is provided by diesel generators, the difficulty and expense of providing the fuel to run these generators at remote locations is a major concern. The Department of Defense has established an overall goal of obtaining 25% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, according to Arista.
Source: Arista Power
