On April 27, 2021, FEMP issued a Federal Agency Call (FAC) on EERE Exchange titled Assisting Federal Facilities with Energy Conservation Technologies (AFFECT) 2021.
On December 1, 2021, FEMP announced the selection of the following 17 federal agency projects to receive a combined total of $13 million in AFFECT funding; the grants will lead to a combined total of over $737 million when leveraged with energy performance contracts (e.g., energy savings performance contracts [ESPCs], utility energy service contracts) from private industry.
- U.S. Coast Guard (USCG): USCG will implement the agency's first microgrid control system (MCS), coupled with solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage system (BESS) resilience energy conservation measures (ECMs), to provide 10 days of off-grid operation during a power disruption event. The project will enable USCG sustained mission excellence, provide adaptability via an augmented BESS and resilience ECMs that will directly address increasing vulnerabilities to intermittent and prolonged power outages from high winds and wildfires, as well as supplement limited regional hydropower resources due to extended drought.
- Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic: NIWC Atlantic's project will provide a comprehensive approach to enhancing its adaptation-resilience posture and energy efficiency across eight NIWC Atlantic sites located in South Carolina, Virginia, and Louisiana. NIWC will deploy solar PV and an MCS to enable back-up generation. Additionally, NIWC will execute data center upgrades, R-22 refrigerant ("Freon") replacement, and other ECMs such as improved lighting systems and water fixtures. These resilience and energy efficiency ECMs will enable 14 days of off-grid operation.
- Internal Revenue Service: Internal Revenue Service is pursuing a comprehensive energy efficiency and resilience project that will empower up to 30 days of off-grid operation in the event of utility power disruption, demonstrating adaptation-resilience and granting the ability to ensure continuity of mission-critical activities. The project will first amplify energy efficiency to substantially reduce baseload energy use, after which it will deploy solar PV coupled with an MCS, BESS, and electric vehicle supply equipment to address federal building energy efficiency and load management.
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP): This project will ensure U.S. CBP secures agency mission-critical operations at the Ramey Border Patrol Station and Headquarters facility in Puerto Rico, which are susceptible to frequent severe hurricanes and tropical storms that can result in months-long power disruptions. U.S. CPB will enhance energy efficiency by deploying an integrated solar PV-BESS solution that will drive down energy costs in a remote area could serve as a model for other remote federal agency sites that are also vulnerable to severe weather due to high-cost or unreliable back-up power.
- General Services Administration (GSA) Region 4, Atlanta: GSA will implement an innovative solution to address water efficiency through utilization of a local aquifer, aiming to demonstrate that the project has significant potential for replicability not only within GSA Region 4, but also throughout several GSA Regions across the country. GSA Region 4 will increase water efficiency and reduce water use, directly addressing the energy-water security nexus, while increasing resilience against droughts and water utility shutoffs by leveraging the aquifer water for cooling tower make-up water.
- Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst: A large-scale, wholistic energy efficiency and resilience project will deploy 40 MW of solar PV combined with a 12-MWh BESS and two unique MCSs alongside a wide range of key energy efficiency and resilience ECMs. The project will first allow Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst to reduce energy use and energy cost via deep energy retrofits. Secondly, it will augment resilience on base to ensure continuity of operations for mission-critical facilities such as flight towers and airfield operations in the case of an extended power disruption event.
- Department of Energy, Office of Science: The Energy Department's Office of Science will develop a new project that bundles comprehensive traditional energy efficiency ECMs and resilience technologies such as lighting, water fixtures, simple heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) controls, solar PV, BESS, and pumped water storage to reduce energy use. The project will also help validate novel, hybrid resilience ECMs including flywheels, ultracapacitors, and nanogrids for grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) that will ensure continuation of mission-critical operations throughout a power disruption event.
- Naval Air Station Whidbey Island: Naval Air Station Whidbey Island will seek to validate an innovative combined heat and power generator that will enhance resilience and energy security in combination with MCS and carbon capture and storage technologies. The combined heat and power technology will offer a potential step change, utilizing the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle, renewable biomass, and supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) in conjunction with carbon capture to sequester carbon, while augmenting power reliability and addressing resilience gaps in utility services experienced during recent storm-induced power disruption events.
- U.S. Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Service: At the Pentagon, the Washington Headquarters Service will implement a multitude of improvements to energy and water efficiency, as well as resilience to severe weather events, via a comprehensive list of ECMs that will reduce baseload energy and water use and GHG emissions while adding energy technologies. The project will strengthen the mission-critical operability of the Pentagon, enabling capabilities such as peak shaving and back-up power, and featuring an MCS that will allow off-grid operation during utility outages while reducing baseload electricity (49%), water (8%), and sewer costs (40%).
- Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall: The project at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall will deploy an advanced, hybrid geothermal heat recovery chiller system coupled with a myriad of additional innovative energy efficiency and resilience ECMs to simultaneously to improve resilience. The project will demonstrate support for a diversity of technology solutions, including the central hybrid geothermal heat pump ECM. If successful, this ECM could have wide applications for replicability and scalability across many Department of Defense installations.
- Eglin Air Force Base: Within this integrated, comprehensive energy efficiency and resilience project, Eglin Air Force Base will implement various resilience ECMs including solar PV, an MCS coupled with a BESS, and natural gas generators while replacing aging chillers that serve critical loads such as data centers. The project will secure mission-critical operations by improving resilience.
- Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest: Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest will initiate a new project to integrate a cybersecurity-compliant MCS and 150-kW/600-kWh BESS with a total of 1.1 MW of solar PV to augment resilience, increase energy efficiency, while allowing for full, continuous mission-critical operability of essential facilities and systems in the case of power disruption events, such as increasingly common, wildfire-induced Public Safety Power Shutoffs. To ensure continuous mission-critical operability of essential facilities, the project will enable advanced energy load management capabilities such as peak shaving, demand response, time of use load-shifting, dynamic frequency, and voltage regulation via the BESS and MCS ECMs.
- GSA Region 4, Valdosta and Brunswick: The project will deploy and demonstrate an advanced solar PV technology utilizing bifacial modules at two federal sites in Georgia. The project will also build out capabilities for these sites to consider implementing complementary resilience ECMs such as a MCS or BESS in the future. It will also validate an advanced, bifacial module solar PV technology, which if successful could be replicated and scaled throughout not only GSA Region 4 and the Southeast, but also more broadly across all GSA Regions nationwide.
- GSA Region 7: This project will implement resilience ECMs including an MCS and BESS to boost resiliency and provide the means to demonstrate GEB concepts such as advanced energy load-shifting and management, and demand response at sites in Laredo and Houston, Texas. GSA Region 7 will work within the current Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) framework to illustrate and promote project successes and lessons learned to rapidly advance adoption of GEB concepts broadly, both throughout Region 7 and other GSA Regions nationwide.
- Joint Base Langley-Eustis: This project will augment the capacity of a BESS to 1MW/4MWh, which will be coupled with a recommissioned energy management control system, cybersecurity-compliant MCS, and 1-MW solar PV array to meet the U.S. Air Forces' resilience requirements for energy performance contracts, allowing the base to shed noncritical energy loads and support mission-critical operations should severe weather such as hurricanes or other external forces result in an extended power disruption event. The project will improve energy efficiency, and provide peak shaving, demand response, energy time-of-use-shifting, dynamic frequency, and voltage regulation to reduce overall base electricity demand and energy costs.
- Federal Aviation Administration: Federal Aviation Administration will implement a novel project to directly address federal building energy efficiency and load management, in coordination with their serving utility, to bundle electric vehicle supply equipment with a range of other energy efficiency and resilience ECMs including ground-mounted solar PV, LED lighting, HVAC upgrades, and variable frequency drives.
- GSA Region 4, Raleigh: This project will replace hurricane-damaged rooftop solar PV panels and inverters located at the Terry Sanford Federal Building in Raleigh, North Carolina with new, more energy-efficient models. The project will also demonstrate the ability to bundle replacement of weather-damaged or otherwise nonoperating solar panels within a larger, multifaceted energy performance contract. GSA aims to demonstrate that the project's true success lies in its ability to aid even greater replicability and scalability of deployment of solar PV as an increasingly cost-effective distributed generation ECM across the federal government.