Ensuring Resilient Operations
Introduction
CEG specializes in using ESPCs to provide energy resilience, reliability, and security for clients. 100% of our federal projects developed in the last 5 years have included designs for resilience improvements such as microgrids, renewable energy, or dual-fuel generation.
As a leader in energy engineering and construction, CEG helps building owners and managers increase the resilience of their buildings. We analyze existing building systems, and design and implement turnkey solutions that enhance resilience and energy security, reduce operating expenses, and increase energy efficiency. We guarantee performance and leverage creative project financing to deliver comprehensive projects that meet resiliency goals and efficiency mandates.
Approach
We use advanced data analysis and modeling tools to design and implement comprehensive resilience improvements. We regularly employ DOE’s Technical Resilience Navigator (TRN) to centralize facility and load data, characterize vulnerabilities, prioritize resilience gaps, and propose viable solutions that increase resilience (e.g., a microgrid, UPS, 2N redundancy). To refine and enhance our designs, we also often use NREL’s REopt and HOMER tools to forecast facility runtime under various outage scenarios.
Promoting Facility Resilience
We enhance and complement existing resilience measures by incorporating distributed energy resources (e.g., combined heat and power, solar PV) and energy storage systems (e.g., thermal, battery). We strategically increase redundancy of key components to allow continued operation of mission-critical systems during grid outages or system/component failures.
Promoting Operational Resilience
Our approach to resilience goes beyond traditional utility redundancy and seeks to improve client operations through facilities-related improvements. We partner with stakeholders to understand vulnerabilities and devise creative solutions to improve operations. We seek to employ the simplest, lowest cost strategies that will have the desired impacts. Examples of previously implemented facilities related resiliency improvements include automated failovers/alarms, cybersecurity upgrades, maintenance strategies, facility consolidation, and modified workflows.
Experience
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (CA)
CEG and NASA worked to improve the resilience of several data centers. The final solution included a series of facilities and operational improvements that significantly improved JPL’s ability to withstand adverse impacts. Select improvements include 2N redundant rack power feeds and UPS units, battery energy storage, new standby generation, system-level cooling redundancy with automated failovers, automated leak detection, and IT system geographic redundancy. These improvements help to ensure that the IT loads of NASA’s most critical space flight missions are fully operational.
Office of Personnel Management (DC)
CEG partnered with OPM to assess their operational resilience using NREL’s TRN. CEG then designed improvements to address high priority resilience gaps. These improvements included back-up generation and electrical infrastructure modernization, 2N redundant cooling for critical infrastructure, a N+1 redundant heating system, a 2N redundant domestic hot water system, and numerous automated safeties and alarms (including a revised emergency heating and building-wide emergency shutdown protocols).
Fort Knox (KY)
CEG worked with the Army to uncover innovative ways to reduce site loads so the Post could reduce the amount of backup generation capacity necessary to carry the entire installation through a grid outage. We also identified ways to more effectively leverage waste heat from existing CHP systems. These efficiency improvements allowed existing distributed generation resources to carry the entire installation for an indefinite amount of time. After implementation, CEG supported Fort Knox during island-mode testing, which confirmed that the entire post could operate with no outside grid electricity or natural gas, relying solely on the distributed generation resources.
