The U.S Department of Defense has teamed up with the Department of Energy for a great green idea, which will develop energy storage. It may sound odd for many but the U.S military is already involved in many environmental initiatives.
Nowadays these two Departments have shown a real green signal that they are ready to be involved in new energy storage projects. Of course the new projects will need to be funded.
According to the Secretary of the Navy Raymond Mabus, these projects can be developed only with a funding of $50 million. The idea came out after it was said that the U.S. military was unable to pioneer the alternative power sources on their missions around the globe. The reason was one – they couldn’t find batteries with enough storage capacity, as well as adequate solar-power storage.
The U.S. mission in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places can use the green power alternative only if there is a better battery. For instance, some foot patrols of the 3rd Battalion in Afghanistan were already using roll-up solar panels on their missions, but they had to ditch 700 pounds of batteries. The waste was unavoidable, simply because the soldiers don’t have enough storage capacity, not to mention that the waste can be dangerous for people in there.
The idea for creating new energy storage projects isn’t new, but this time the two Departments are going to launch two projects in this matter. The first project is about creating new hybrid modules for energy storage.
The project will try to improve and create better batteries as it uses only light weighted materials. The batteries will be capable to store huge amounts of energy. The batteries will be very important for the U.S. military, for they will be able to store the energy for use without any waste. The second project that will be funded by the two Departments is going to be a project that will develop energy storage only in military power grids.
It is a well known fact that U.S. has military bases all over the world. The military needs for energy storage have been growing. Therefore, the second project will aim to boost the energy reliability, as well as finding an adequate prevention of an eventual energy supply disruption.
The energy projects will be launched with a certain goal: the expectations are that by 2020 the energy consumption of half of the U.S. bases will be reduced to zero. Using renewable energy sources in all of the U.S. bases is also one of the goals of the green military projects.
