Two 6.5 MW projects located on the Fort Johnson U.S. Army installation are underway, and a new 5 MW community solar project in New York is complete.
The U.S. Army and New York community solar are progressing toward their goals with recent installation projects by Onyx Renewables.
The projects include two 6.5 MW projects located on the Fort Johnson U.S. Army installation are underway, and a new 5 MW community solar project in New York is complete.
The two U.S. Army installations at the Fort Johnson in Louisiana, each of which 6.5 MW, are expected to be completed in Q1 of 2025. The three solar projects total 18 MW will all use fixed tilt racking.
The projects are being led by Onyx Renewables, which operates as the projects’ owner, Northern Sun Energy, which handles the projects’ engineering, procurement and construction, and Castillo Engineering, which oversees the design and engineering.
Onyx Renewables was also involved in the solar installations at the Fort Riley military base in 2022, which power about half the Kansas base’s homes.
The installations are part of the Army’s transition to make of its installations 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030. The goal is part of an executive order signed by President Biden 2021, which states, “The federal government shall use its scale and procurement power to achieve 100% carbon pollution-free electricity on a net annual basis by 2030, including 50% 24/7 carbon pollution-free electricity.” The U.S. government is the largest energy consumer in the U.S.
The Army also aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% from all Army buildings by 2032, compared to a 2005 baseline. Light-duty non-tactical vehicles would be electric vehicles by 2027, and all non-tactical vehicles would be EVs by 2035.
Other U.S. army renewable energy projects include:
- A flow battery pilot project located at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
- A 1.1 MW floating solar installation on the Big Muddy Lake located at Camp Mackall. The system was paired with a 2 MW battery energy storage system.
- The Department of Defense as an exclusive purchaser of all output generated by two upcoming solar facilities in South Carolina. The partnership is valued at an estimated $248 million, and will serve five military bases across North Carolina and South Carolina.
The U.S. Army says climate change makes it challenging to serve its core purpose. According to the Department of Defense (DoD), natural disasters and extreme weather events caused by climate change has caused $13 billion in damages to DoD base
New York
The 5 MW New York community solar project recently passed its testing and should be up and running soon, Christopher Castillo, the CEO of Castillo Engineering told pv magazine USA.
Community solar benefits renters, homeowners and business owners who don’t own their own homes, don’t have a suitable roof orientation for solar or who can’t afford the upfront costs of solar.
With more than 1.9 GW of operational capacity, New York has the top community solar market in the country, more than twice than that of Minnesota (0.9 GW), the state with the second largest community market, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. As of June 2024, there was 7.87 GW of community solar in operation across the participating 44 states and localities in the U.S.
Much of the community solar developed in the state has received benefits from the state’s NY-Sun program, a state solar incentive program for distributed generation assets. Since being launched in 2011, NY-Sun has put forth more than $1.8 billion to advance solar buildout in the state.
However, despite its market share, New York is projected to miss its clean-energy target set by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) in 2019. Under the CLCPA, the state pledged to reach 70% renewable energy by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050.
But in July, the state issued its required progress report under the act, and said, “The 70% target envisioned by the CLCPA is extraordinarily ambitious and has subsequently been rendered even more ambitious by the combination of deployment headwinds and load growth tailwinds.” While the report provided actions to help make the goal potentially achievable, it concluded, “a delay in achieving the 70% goal may be unavoidable.”
s.
