The Department of Defense (DoD) has lagged behind the commercial sector in deployments of Automated Demand Response (ADR). This technology is essential to enable DoD facilities to participate in the dynamic balancing of the power grid that is now required to optimize the use of renewable energy and maximize the economic benefits and revenue opportunities of grid operator and utility programs associated of ADR. IPKeys will develop a per Service guidance document on the required permissions and cyber controls that are required to interconnect grid operators and utilities with DoD building control systems. The research team will deploy a certified OpenADR 2.0 gateway, program the building control systems to accept the utility commands and enroll the facility in an annual revenue generating program offered by local utilities and/or grid operators. This methodology will give a single Open Standard method of connecting DoD sites to their utilities eliminating the site by site integration issues that are typical with propriety solutions. It also provides a single Federally reviewed cyber secure protocol that can be used across all services.

Although the technology has been commercially available, the cyber and network permission barriers have greatly slowed the adoption of automated demand response within the DoD. A documented path forward and accredited hardware for each of the Services will give other facilities a proven methodology to implement that is tailored to each Service’s requirements.

Automated demand response is very inexpensive, typical costs are less than $20K for a military installation and annual revenues for 1 megawatt (MW) of load shed are worth $60K. These types of programs will typically provide a less than 6-month payback and provide an essential grid service to enable our path to a 100% renewable generation future. Camp Pendleton estimated that 2MW load shed was easily achievable with no additional investment. Overall benefits to the DoD could exceed $200 Million.