The U.S. Army is putting money in wind, biomass, geothermal and solar, but it's the latter that is getting the lion’s share of Pentagon dollars in 2013.
The Army announced $7 billion in power-purchase agreements (PPA) to nearly two dozen companies for solar energy on Wednesday. Last year, the Army said that it would spend about $7 billion on renewable energy contracts, and earlier this year it awarded the first five contracts to geothermal projects. The most recent announcement indicates that wind and biomass could be an afterthought following the Army’s spending on solar.
Here is the full list of contract winners:
- Acciona Energy North America Corp., Chicago, Ill.
- Apex Wind Energy Holdings, LLC, Charlottesville, Va.
- Borrego Solar, San Diego, Calif.
- Cobra Industrial Services, Inc., Houston, Texas
- Dominion Energy, Inc., Richmond, Va.
- Element Power US, LLC., Portland, Ore.
- Emerald Infrastructure, San Antonio, Texas
- Enel Green Power North America
- Energy Matters, LLC, Arlington, Va.
- Gehrlicher Solar America Corporation, Springfield, N.J.
- Johnson Controls Government Systems, Milwaukee, Wis.
- Lend Lease, Nashville, Tenn.
- LTC Federal, LLC, Detroit, Mich.
- New Generation Power, Chicago, Ill.
- NRG Energy, Inc., Princeton, N.J.
- Photon Finance, LLC – Sunpower, Mountain View, Calif.
- Siemens Government Technologies, Inc., Arlington, Va.
- Silverado Power, LLC, San Francisco, Calif.
- Solar Power Ventures, Arlington, Va.
- Standard Solar, Inc., Rockville, Md.
- Sunpower Corporation, Richmond, Calif.
- Washington Gas Energy Systems, Inc., McLean, Va.
The “multiple-vendor, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price, non-option, non-multi-year” contracts are for solar projects that are built on private lands or under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense. Once the projects are built, the companies will bid for orders to sell the energy to the Army. There were 114 bids submitted in total.
The contracts are part of a larger commitment for the Department of Defense to deploy 3 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2025. Overall, the DOD has a target, which was signed by President George W. Bush, of 25 percent of its energy from renewables by 2025. Another domestic military solar project between SolarCity and U.S. Bancorp is a renewable energy tax equity fund, SolarStrong, which aims to put solar on the rooftops of privatized military housing.