The National Defense Authorization Act and all branches mandate resilience yet insufficient resources exist to support infrastructure and training, and further, limited guidance on how to conceptualize, execute, and fund resilience. This project will provide energy resilience training focused on microgrids to:

(a) Enhance understanding, design, and sustainment of resilient energy access for mission assurance within military installations,

(b) Facilitate cross-collaboration between utilities, installation leadership, and installation facilities to develop resilient energy solutions such as microgrids, and

(c) Disseminate a standardized microgrid resilience knowledge set and expertise across Department of Defense (DoD) entities with continuation through DoD training programs for facilities personnel.

This project will refine and scale existing training content from Arizona State University (ASU), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Slipstream into a series of recurring microgrid training programs targeted toward military installation facilities and leadership, DoD laboratories and warfare centers, energy utility partners, and DoD contractors/partners. Innovative aspects of this training methodology include:

• A continuous feedback collection and improvement model to ensure training quality and continued relevance. This method has been successfully implemented in previous training efforts to create a flexible framework for adapting curricula to current and emerging needs.
• A comprehensive needs assessment that maps key skill requirements for uniformed and civilian DoD job roles, and denotes gaps in knowledge to enable targeted training topics and metrics to measure program success. This builds a narrative on microgrid training needs and personnel requirements for energy resilience in the DoD.
• Flexible format curricula (in-person, virtual, or hybrid delivery) to provide valuable skills development in multiple modalities while accommodating needs of trainee responsibilities and scheduling challenges, travel budget limitations, or other travel limitations such as COVID-19.
• Needs-focused curricula design approach with modularized lessons supported with optional customizable case studies and focus areas. Technology transfer pathways will standardize and scale training by ASU and NREL, and embed components of existing training or introduce expansions into DoD training commands with support from Slipstream and Converge Strategies.

Mission assurance and success is dependent on the defense workforce being equipped with the tools and technical acuity to fight modern wars. As emphasized by the National Defense Strategy 2018, priority must be placed on developing a modernized, highly-capable force through recruitment, development, and retainment of talent both in uniformed and civilian job roles. This work directly meets this need by providing targeted training to participants to improve knowledge in career relevant skills and prepare them to design and operate DoD installations with a systems-level understanding of resilient energy technology such as microgrids. Results will be directly measured through quantitative and qualitative metrics on knowledge gain, program impact, career relevance, program quality, and adoption. These success indicators and subsequent training scaling during and following funded program completion will improve the capacity of the DoD to meet critical power for 7- 14 days, reduce costs of critical load protection, and reduce overall operation costs for utilities.