The technical project development team was primarily comprised of PowerSurety principals who took the lead on site integration, technical development, system costs and economics, and permitting. As the asset owner, the Keenan Development team was responsible for federal contracting, land management, commercial structure, financing, and ownership of the facility. The Keenan/Chevron team was selected over 20+ teams that submitted proposals, due to the strength of its energy resiliency plan and its ability to fast-track the plant’s development and design-build process in order to align with the schedules of lab construction projects already underway. The NIBC microgrid was required to be substantially complete prior to the commissioning of the first lab, which had a multiple month head start.

The $105 million initial phase of the five-phase microgrid project was financed through the issuance of a 25-year private revenue bond. Per the terms of the Enhanced-Use Lease (EUL) the land was outleased under, the Army receives in-kind consideration equal to the fair market value of the leased assets in the form of capital improvements and other services on the Fort Detrick garrison.

For energy production from the NIBC Microgrid, energy services were contracted through both a fixed capacity charge and variable charges on energy streams that change based on consumption levels. The MaaS model allows multiple federal agency off-takers to operate their bio-safety labs with high quality and 99.999% available power without being burdened or distracted with operating duties/risk, while at the same time, being relieved of providing significant upfront capital outlays for facility design/construction.

The Fort Detrick Microgrid has the ability to completely decouple from both the electric utility grid and the natural gas distribution system and run 72 hours without fuel replenishment. Electrical decoupling – both to and from the grid – is seamless, with completely bump-free transitions accomplished using rotary flywheel-based uninterruptable power supplies (Rotary UPS). The microgrid is manned 24 x 7 x 365.

The interagency nature of the project required close coordination and collaboration between no less than a dozen government agencies and departments, including federal, state, and local levels. Additionally, the effort required vetting with local community constituencies and collaboration between approximately one dozen subcontractors. Lastly, extreme coordination was required on a daily basis to prioritize site activities and access among numerous subcontractors seeking to operate in heavily overlapping and constrained construction site geographies.

Perhaps the most critical element of construction to the NIBC was on-time delivery of the microgrid facility since steam and chilled water for lab commissioning would not be available if the microgrid were not up and running. The Fort Detrick microgrid, however, was delivered on time despite initial contractor selection having occurring many months after design completion of the first lab. Much work was accomplished in the 15 months that occurred between contractor selection and award of the ground lease, execution of the energy services contract (ESC), issuance of environmental permits, and financial closing of the transaction. Following financial closing, construction of the entire microgrid was completed and commercial operation achieved in just 18 short months.

The benefits of the MaaS-based Fort Detrick Microgrid to federal agencies are numerous.

• Lab operations have never been interrupted and science has never been lost due to an unplanned outage of the Fort Detrick microgrid. This is the case in spite of numerous PJM grid outages and record-breaking extreme weather events that shut down virtually non-NIBC portions of the Fort Detrick garrison.
• Expensive lab equipment or any of the hundreds of variable frequency drives that protect lab personnel via air containment have never been damaged or bypassed as the result of poor power quality.
• Steam and chilled water are produced more efficiently than would have been possible with individual systems in each lab.
• The microgrid was built in on-demand, iterative fashion as new labs were added to the campus, avoiding the cost of building infrastructure in-advance in anticipation of future loads. As of 2017, five phases have been built-out.
• Lab personnel are able to focus exclusively on their core mission of producing science rather than operating utility plants within each building.
• No capital was required for construction of the microgrid, which freed-up scarce appropriated funds for construction of the NIBC labs and grounds.
• Operations, maintenance, and repair and replacement (OMR&R) of equipment are all included in the unitized cost of energy with thorough preventative maintenance routines performed on a regularly scheduled and ongoing basis to ensure equipment longevity and uninterrupted system availability.
• Approximately 15 percent of expensive and precious lab space was able to be used for lab operations rather than onsite equipment such as chillers, boilers, and generator sets as a result of the microgrid configuration.
• Lab security was improved due the lack of need for non-lab personnel to enter the buildings to provide maintenance on utility systems that, without the microgrid, would have been located within the labs.