The Army has awarded $61 million in contracts for renewable energy and energy savings projects at its bases, including one that will create the service's largest renewable energy project to date.

The service, which manages 15 million acres in the United States, much of it in the sun-drenched Southwest, is aggressively pursuing alternative energy and efficiency measures aimed at saving money, hitting mandated targets for renewable energy and making bases less reliant on the commercial electric grid.

The three projects awarded in recent months are projected to save the Army 267 billion British thermal units annually and add 8.2 megawatts of renewable power capacity, according to a news release.

At White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the Army has awarded a $16.8 million contract to Siemens Government Technologies to build a 4.4 MW solar project, the service's largest renewable energy project so far. The service anticipates that the system will meet 10 percent of the installation's electricity consumption by the end of this year and save $930,000 annually.

Fort Bliss, one of the Army's bases aiming to go net-zero, will be gaining 2.2 million kilowatt-hours' worth of annual solar generation under a contract with Johnson Controls (Greenwire, April 21, 2011). The project is designed to offset peak afternoon energy demands when rates and the risk of brownouts are highest. The service projects it will save $42 million in energy costs over 25 years.

Johnson Controls was also awarded a $34 million contract to install wind, solar, LED lighting and energy management control systems at several Army installations in Puerto Rico. The contract is projected to save the service more than $65 million over 16 years.

All three sets of projects are designed as Energy Savings Performance Contracts, under which private companies pay for renewable energy and efficiency projects and are then paid out of money saved from the measures. As the military faces a budget crunch, it is increasingly relying on such third-party financing measures for energy projects.