Navy Research Collaboration on Energy Resiliency
Abstract
Preserving the viability and operational capacity of the Navys energy assets as an element of the nations critical deferucture is recognized as a fundamental need in the U.S. National Strategy for Homeland Security. The National Strategy defines the infrastructure mission as focusing on the resilience of the system as a whole. With specific reference to energy infrastructure, resilience is defined in federal law as the ability to avoid, prepare for, minimize, adapt to, and recover from anticipated and unanticipated energy disruptions in order to ensure energy availability and reliability sufficient to provide for mission assurance and readiness, including mission essential operations related to readiness, and to execute or rapidly reestablish mission essential requirements. This mandate to achieve energy resilience is occurring when the energy industry itself is experiencing greater change in tl than it has in the last hundred years. These technological revolutions have made energy a national security issue for commercial markets as well as for the defense establishment. The Navy is thus not alone in many of the energy resilience challenges it faces. Stony Brook University and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, with the support of the utility industry, energy related industries and others, have developed a research agenda to improve the resilience, reliability and security of naval installations on land and at sea, enhance the quality of power, minimize interruptions and accelerate restoration at naval installations. The proposed research program leverages this deep academic knowledge and research experience, which is informed by longtime collaboration with major utilities and a USDOE national laboratory, to take concrete steps toward resolving these challenges.Through this program, the Navy will participate in the pioneering research being performed outside the walls to advance energy technologies that will help the Navy to achieve its fundamental goals of resiliency, reliability and efficiencywhich we suggest could apply equally to installations and mobile platformswith the addition of cyber and physical forms of grid security. The proposed research effort, emphasizing electrical energy, will generate advancements in materials and technologies for wind, solar, other low-carbon sustainable technologies including nuclear and bio-fuels, as well as conventional sources, energy storage, and grid security, and the capability to integrate these into the Navys energy infrastructure. The proposed program will create a collaborative platform for applied research informed by the new fundamental knowledge of the academic sector, the private sector and the defense sector as the development of new and renewed energy technologies continues to accelerate. This platform will bridge the distance among these constituencies, providing a base for future mutually beneficial relationships. Apart from the technical research, the funding will propose programmatic steps to ensure the next generation of researchers, engineers, and practitioners will be well trained in supporting the Navy and the power industry, which have common needs for expertise. This program is intended to be collaborative, to ensure that the initial effort wictive redesign of academic, industry, and Navy educational programs to support the Navys energy systems. Executing the projects proposed in this program will address the Navys priority energy resilience needs, help the Navy fulfill its critical infrastructure mandate and establish a basis for mutuality in tackling the common technology problems facing the Navy and the U.S. energy industry.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Oct 19, 2020
- Source ID
- N000142012858
Entities
People
- Y. Shamash
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Research Foundation for the State University of New York
- United States Navy