Feb 17 2011
Eaton, engaged in power delivery, power quality, management and industrial mechanization products and services, declared that it has been selected to obtain a federal stimulus funding of $2.4 million to develop a micro-grid to assist the military base units to handle their power storage facilities while cutting down on their green house gas emissions.
The project when completed will enable the mission critical military installations with continuous power supply without depending on the grid connected utility supply.
The project slated for completion in 18 months, will be managed by the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in the first year and concentrate on research and development functions. The research activities will be performed at the University of Wisconsin, Georgia Tech University and at the innovation centers owned by Eaton located in Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. The research teams from the university and the officials from Eaton will also make a presentation on how the new system can manage the use of wind and solar power generation and the power generated from the natural gas and store the generated energy for use in future. The final phase of the project will concentrate on further research and developments and showcase the project at Fort Still, Oklahoma.
The micro-grid application being developed by Eaton will comprise a smart grid concept to add other practical usages such as consolidation of renewable energy sources, combining the fuel mix for maximum output, storing of energy and energy system management. The new application will aim at reducing the operational costs, design structure of the system, improving the consistency of the system and its uptime and ultimately will reduce the carbon foot print of the army installations.
Source: http://www.eaton.com