Energy Efficient Tactical Shelters

ABSTRACT: Select Engineering Services (SES) is a successful provider of engineering and technical services to Air Force and Army customers; including system design, development, testing, and sustainment of complex tactical shelter and energy systems. Over the past nine years, SES has been instrumental in helping the Air Force develop and test a new generation of energy efficient composite shelters; offering increased thermal efficiency and significantly reduced fuel consumption. SES is well positioned to build on this previous work by designing energy efficient composite shelters that include several other energy saving technologies. SES is also uniquely positioned to make use of more than a decade of alternative energy R & D that can also be applied to shelter designs, allowing shelters to adapt to varying energy technologies that are deemed appropriate for given deployment scenarios. SES will conduct a Feasibility Analysis that will assess a broad range of innovative energy efficient/emerging technologies; including renewable generation and energy storage/management. Results are anticipated to show a high potential for short-term fuel savings of 50% or more. Additionally, the SES proposed Shelter Energy Laboratory is expected to establish software tools capable of rapidly modeling deployed shelters to provide highly adaptive energy conservation and alternative energy technologies. BENEFIT: The commercial potential and benefit for energy efficient tactical shelters is significant. There are a number of non-military organizations that use shelters in remote locations where there is no grid power or fuel delivery infrastructure. Commercial benefits include: minimizing fuel delivery costs to remote geological or construction sites, minimizing the ongoing cost of establishing fuel supply lines to such locations, and reducing the potential liability associated with fuel spills and/or emissions in remote locations. Potential customers include large multinational industries such as petroleum and mining; telecommunications, organizations involved in local enterprises such as forestry or road construction; and scientific organizations involved in remote ecosystem research. In each of these cases, delivering energy to the shelter is expensive. Moreover, these sites are often located in ecologically sensitive locations (e.g., national/state parks, arctic regions, or other sensitive environments), where the use of fuel, and/or the construction of a fuel delivery infrastructure, are discouraged by local authorities. Research for this effort is anticipated to show up to a 50% reduction in fuel consumption using a variety of energy use/management technologies as applied to shelter system designs.