The U.S. Army and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) signed a memorandum of understanding to explore best practices for joint energy resilience planning at Army bases.
The memo, signed by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment (ASA IE&E), Honorable Rachel Jacobson, and EEI President Tom Kuhn, establishes a framework for the two organizations to share information on energy security and resilience strategies.
The U.S. Army has a long history of working closely with electric companies to meet its energy resilience, efficiency, and sustainability goals, according to an EEI release. To address Army’s ever evolving resilience needs, the ASA IE&E is engaging with the electric companies serving Army installations to facilitate information sharing on electric company infrastructure vulnerabilities and planned investments potentially impacting Army installations and mission operations.
The memo lays the foundation for joint efforts to identify, develop, and implement best practices for energy resilience planning, with the goal of ensuring a secure and reliable energy supply for military installations, as well as the broader community.
An original memo, signed in 2021, initiated a 1-year pilot program that enabled Joint Energy Resilience Planning across the Army enterprise. Under this agreement, EEI facilitated planning exercises between installations and electric companies in places like Fort Belvoir, Va., with Dominion Energy; Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Missile Range, N. M., with El Paso Electric; Fort Huachuca, Ariz., with Tucson Electric Power, and U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii with Hawaiian Electric. These exercises led to identification of shared vulnerabilities, communications gaps, and opportunities to improve Army-electric company coordination during grid emergencies.
