Tom Willie is the CEO of Blue Pillar.

As well all know, when the lights go out, bad things happen. When it comes to the federal government, energy resiliency challenges are not just "bad," they are critical, especially if you're talking about facilities like defense installations.

In 2007 the National Science Foundation (NSF) outside of Washington DC sent workers home after a major power outage forced the entire agency to close. Given our national security posture then and now, this is a troubling event. In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Michael Wu, energy program director for the Truman National Security Project and Center for National Policy, said there were 87 power outages at domestic military bases lasting eight hours or longer in 2012. In the same article, Wu cited U.S. military installations utilize the civilian power grid for 98 percent of their electricity. This could be devastating in the wake of a major cyber or terrorist attack on our national power grid or another natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy.

The federal government is the largest energy consumer in the United States, therefore, it is extremely concerned about high-energy costs, energy management objectives for sustainability, and the safety and security of its mission-critical facilities and, of course, its citizens. A major issue the federal government faces is managing energy equipment, performance and efficiency across all of its mission-critical facilities in the U.S. and abroad. Unfortunately, most facility power management occurs at the local facility level today.

So how can federal agencies that maintain critical facilities like military bases centralize facility management while mitigating threats to energy resiliency that could put lives and critical infrastructure at risk?

Thanks to investments and projects involving microgrid technology in the past 10 years, the federal government has created new opportunities to develop and test new energy systems and devices that take advantage of smart metering infrastructure and microgrid applications. For example, the Smart Power Infrastructure Demonstration for Energy Reliability and Security (SPIDERS) joint demonstration, which includes participants from the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was created for a number of reasons:

1.Protect electricity grids from power outages due to cyber attacks;

2.Integrate distributed energy assets for back-up power during emergencies;

3.Sustain critical operations during major outages; and

4.Manage electrical power and consumption efficiency to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and lower costs.

The Internet as a connector for microgrids and IP-enabled energy devices is another major factor that is enabling and driving innovation in the centralized facility management space. Essentially, the energy world has caught up with the "Internet of Things" (IoT), delivering new "Energy IoT" solutions that connect a myriad of devices within critical facilities across broad geographies. Today, we often see critical facilities run at the local level and when a problem occurs, like a back-up power generator running out of fuel, that particular agency or military base will deploy technicians to fix the problem.

This process presents multiple problems -- downtime, uncertainty around time-to-repair, and of course, unforeseen costs to deploy people. In an energy IoT-enabled centralized facilities management model, one manager could monitor generator fuel levels across multiple sites and remotely manage controls and technician dispatch should an issue arise with equipment or operational systems.

While many microgrid systems operate IP-enabled devices for energy intelligence, storage and power control today, a centralized management piece that is affordable, scalable and device-agnostic is just coming into play. In addition to monitoring energy performance and efficiency, government agencies and the military are turning to centralized facility management platforms so they can see how energy resilient their operations are, as this is of the utmost importance for their critical facilities and the agencies and people they serve.

Energy resilience is absolutely critical in facilities where bad things happen when the lights go out. Centralized power management systems enabled by energy IoT allow facility operators and organizational leaders to prevent outages by monitoring their ecosystem of energy connected devices and systems in a cost-effective manner.

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