FORT KNOX, Ky. — While many installations begin to explore new ways to cut energy costs and reduce their carbon footprint during Energy Action Month throughout October, Fort Knox officials reflect on a ground-breaking decades-long mission for energy independence.
The Fort Knox energy management program has been about the business of looking for better ways to harness energy for a long time, dating from even before the early 1990s, when Congress passed its Energy Policy Act of 1992, expecting all federal agencies to achieve a 20% improvement in energy efficiency by 2000.
Fort Knox was already working on it.
The Directorate of Public Works director at Fort Knox in 2015, Pat Walsh, recalled his time as the energy branch chief in the 1980s when they were looking to improve energy resilience and save taxpayer dollars. One of the first ideas was to construct refuse-fired incinerators as a way to convert the waste into energy while eliminating the need to find someplace to store the waste.
Later, they also tested wind energy with the help of Nolin Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation, considered first attempt at wind power from anybody in Kentucky.
"The purpose of the windmill site was to show whether that solution is a possibility here," said then Nolin RECC operations energy engineer Dustin Ward in 2015.
Both ideas eventually failed for different reasons.
“We had to ask ourselves, 'What do we have in our arsenal of opportunities?'" said current energy branch chief RJ Dyrdek back in 2015.
Another idea is still in use today, although not quite like it was originally envisioned. It’s also an idea on which engineers don’t heavily rely: a 10,000-panel solar energy field spread across 10 acres, generating 2.1 megawatts of energy. This idea originally consisted of stick-on flat solar panels on top of facilities that generated 1.57 megawatts.
At the time solar was considered cutting edge technology, the only such energy alternative being used on a military installation east of the Mississippi River and in the state of Kentucky. But Kentucky is not known for its cloudless conditions, averaging only about 189 sunny days a year, and some form of precipitation about 120 days on average.
By the mid-1990s, while other installations were focused on meeting the 20% energy reduction, Fort Knox had already set their sights on higher goals: energy independence. Energy managers and installation leaders believed that if they were going to achieve that goal, they would have to get it from somewhere else.
What about underground?
“We have great dirt and rocks in Kentucky, said Dyrdek at that time. “It was then that geothermal heating and cooling became obvious.”
They struck paydirt.
Geothermal heating and cooling for the 109,000 acres and more than 250 facilities that operate at Fort Knox became the kind of reality leaders were hoping to achieve the goal of cost reductions. The overall improvement not only equals better ventilation, improved air quality and reduced mold exposure for the community, it improved efficiency as much as 57%, far above the 20% the federal government was hoping to achieve.
However, all that changed in the winter of 2009.
An historic, relentless snow and ice storm slammed Kentucky with heavy ice coating tree branches hanging above power lines. The heavy ice eventually buckled and snapped the tree branches, which brought down the power lines. Some residents in the area found themselves without power for a couple of weeks. Fort Knox operations ceased for almost an entire week.
Out of that disaster came inspiration and determination. Leaders realized a dependency on only one form of energy equaled vulnerability. That vulnerability came in the form of externally generated power.
"When Soldiers and their families were evacuated from their homes because we could not provide power for them, there was a sense we failed them," said Walsh in 2015. "That is not a feeling I want to experience again."
They again turned their attention to the ground.
Energy officials tapped into their good fortune when they discovered that Fort Knox was sitting atop deposits of methane gas, produced by microorganisms digesting layers of shale beneath the earth’s surface.
"Our energy team is special," said then-Garrison Commander Col. T.J. Edwards … "we don't sit on our laurels. We're constantly getting after it, asking, ‘How do we get better?’" He also praised the efforts of Brandon Marcum, an engineer and Harshaw Trane subcontractor of Nolin RECC, as central to creating and developing the concepts that led to the installation’s independence.
According to Dyrdek, Fort Knox is not the only installation sitting on top of such a resource. At least 15 Army installations have that benefit. But Fort Knox tapped into it.
“We had found the answer,” said Dyrdek in 2015. “Natural gas doesn't cost too much, so the project started to grow. We started thinking 'What if we used natural gas for the entire installation.'"
So, they did just that.
Fort Knox bolstered their electrical capabilities with five electricity-generating facilities using the natural gas-powered generators. As the generators produce heat, it is captured using a process called “combined heat and power,” which then provides heating and cooling to buildings and backup demand power to the entire post.
All of this combined with the installation-wide use of LED lighting, energy reducing light sensors, closed window policies, and modernized automated wastewater management, has led Fort Knox to a singular distinction as the only installation in the Defense Department with the ability to be truly energy independent.
What has followed is a trophy case full of awards and accolades from virtually everybody who is anybody in the energy sector: from the Departments of the Army and Defense to the Department of Energy and beyond. By 2013, the installation had already received eight consecutive Secretary of Army Energy awards for innovative technologies.
Fort Knox has even been recognized in non-military engineering circles.
As October reaches its Energy Action Month equinox with this year’s theme being “Energy Resilience: Sustain the Mission, Secure the Future,” others might be inclined that think Fort Knox will sit back on its laurels and sit this one out.
That won’t happen, said Dyrdek in 2021. In fact, they’re already planning for the next phase in energy resilience and efficiency.
"If we start making electricity with fuel cells,” Dyrdek said, “that will take away all of our electrical needs."
Judging by Fort Knox’s almost 40-year track record of achieving energy efficiency and independence, leaders suggest it’s only a matter of when.
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