Solar, Sourcing Renewables, Wind  -  November 20, 2018

Fort Hood saves with solar

Fort Hood has saved an estimated $5 million over the last 20 months after added a solar plant featuring 65,000 panels. 

Energy use at the U.S. Army base, located in Killeen, Texas costs about $25 million a year, according to a report by Everything Lubbock. “So we’re looking for ways to be more efficient, to be better stewards of taxpayer dollars and one way that we came up with a few years ago was to try to use more renewable energy,” said Brian Dosa, public works director at Fort Hood. In addition to the solar plant, the base also produces energy via wind turbines in West Texas. 

The goal, according to the report, is to expand its renewable energy production so it’s sufficient enough if there were any issues with the grid. “If we were to get to a situation where the grid was to go down, maybe have a blackout due to some sort of mechanical failure or a terrorist incident or something like that, we would like to be in a position where our critical assets –our airfields, our hospital, our railhead where we would deploy our units, our key command and control facilities - would be able to maintain their electricity and continue their mission during a period of a blackout,” said Dosa.