The US Army has launched its first floating solar array

The U.S. Army has launched a floating solar farm at Fort Bragg in North Carolina as part of the military branch’s climate strategy to ramp up the use of clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Army officials last week unveiled the floating solar array that sits on Big Muddy Lake at Camp Mackall, a Special Forces training site overseen by Fort Bragg. Fort Bragg is the largest military base in the U.S. with about 49,000 military personnel, 11,000 civilian employees and 23,000 family members. 

The installation is now the largest of its kind in the Southeastern United States and is the first solar array deployed by the Department of Defense. 

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The 1.1-megawatt solar facility is equipped with a 2 megawatt-hour battery energy storage system and will provide power to Fort Bragg as well as provide electricity during outages. The array also includes an electronic recloser, which responds to events like a tree limb brushing against a power line, to reset the system and restore power. 

The project is a collaborative effort between Fort Bragg, utility Duke Energy and renewable energy company Ameresco. 

“This project fulfills the commitment made in our Army Climate Strategy to increase resilience while delivering clean energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Rachel Jacobson, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, said in a statement. 

“When we collaborate with local utilities and industry to promote energy resilience while powering the local grid, it is a winning solution across the board,” Jacobson said. 

Solar panels built to float on the surface of a body of water, often referred to as floatovoltaics, offer several advantages, the largest being the panels do not take up valuable space on land like traditional solar farms. 

The project is part of the Army’s first-ever climate strategy released earlier this year that aims to reduce the military service’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and attain net-zero emissions by 2050. The strategy is intended to direct the Army in how it responds to climate threats that affect soldier readiness, warfighting and installations. 

As part of the plan, the Army plans to install a microgrid on all of its installations by 2035 and have a fleet of all-electric vehicles by 2050. 

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