ADVANCING MILITARY MICROGRIDS

The report examines the transition of U.S. Navy bases in the Southwest toward microgrids to enhance energy security and integrate renewables. It identifies five key findings: the need for more granular design requirements, a conflict between utility-scale renewable goals and microgrid security, the immediate value of enhanced control systems, the complexities of participating in California's electricity markets, and internal Navy bureaucratic barriers. The document recommends that the Navy, grid operators, and regulators collaborate to define reliability needs, quantify the business case, and remove regulatory hurdles to enable microgrid adoption.

• Existing Navy data on building criticality is sufficient for siting back-up generators but inadequate for microgrid design, which requires more granular information on islanding duration, shifting critical loads during outages, and building-level load criticality.
• The Navy's '1 GW Task Force' focuses on large, utility-scale renewable projects (over 20 MW), which may undermine energy security by creating major vulnerability choke points and failing to leverage the integration of small-scale distributed renewables.
• Investing in advanced control systems offers a near-term opportunity to reduce energy costs through demand shifting and provides the physical and experiential foundation necessary for full microgrid operation.
• While microgrids can generate revenue and reduce costs in the California market, they face high transaction costs and complex requirements, including the wholesale distribution access tariff (WDAT) interconnection process and specific CAISO market designations like 'non-generating resource' or 'proxy demand response'.
• Significant internal Navy barriers impede microgrid adoption, including split incentives between funding and benefiting stakeholders, restrictive acquisition processes for outside expertise, and Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC 2-000-05N) that mandate diesel generators even when microgrids are present.

APA

RMI (2013). ADVANCING MILITARY MICROGRIDS. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_NavyReport.pdf

Chicago

RMI. ADVANCING MILITARY MICROGRIDS. 2013. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_NavyReport.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=ADVANCING MILITARY MICROGRIDS |date=September 2013 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_NavyReport.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2013advancing, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{ADVANCING MILITARY MICROGRIDS}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2013}, month = sep, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_NavyReport.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }