THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGIES AND MISSIONS ON CONTINGENCY BASE FUEL CONSUMPTION

Abstract

Fossil fuels satisfy the bulk of the U.S. military's energy requirements for transportation and sustainment needs. In recent years, deployments to Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) have highlighted inefficiencies in how the U.S. military generates electrical power. Many strategies have been proposed to unleash the U.S. military from the tether of fuel. This paper presents a mixed integer linear program to minimize the fuel needed to meet power requirements at a contingency base over a 24-hour period. The paper then assesses the impact on fuel consumption and generator run-hours of introducing energy storage systems and photovoltaic arrays to different power demand scenarios based on the mission, geographic, and seasonal parameters. Removing the traditional requirement for spinning reserves and allowing generators to operate at 100% of their rated load resulted in substantial reductions in generator run-hours across all scenarios. The results showed that adding an energy storage system had effectively no impact on generator run-hours or fuel consumption, and that the impact of adding a photovoltaic array was highly dependent upon the latitude and season in which the contingency base was established. The author concludes that diesel and JP-8 are the best methods for storing energy at a contingency base, and that reducing energy demand is the most direct way to reduce fuel consumption and generator run-hours.