Second, the AFMC WG11 Team developed the walk event, the walk-through. This
event walked participants through a short,
related scenario, allowing them to understand facilitated exercise dynamics and feel
more comfortable with the table-top/strate-gic-level guided discussion environment.
These efforts culminated in the run
event, WG11 exercise. This full-day event
included more than 75 participants from
the headquarters, base level, the local elec-
tric utility provider, as well as observers.
These observers included industry and gov-
ernment subject matter experts on energy
security and assurance as well as critical
participants from the local community.
to focus discussions on initial response
actions. WG11 participants then broke
into two groups – mission and mission
support – and were asked to look at lon-ger-term impacts to an extended power
outage scenario. The mission breakout
session focused on how to degrade their
operations gracefully while still ensuring mission success. The mission support
breakout session focused on sustainment
and restoration of support functions, utilities, and energy commodities. The expert
facilitators and subject matter experts continued to provide their support during the
breakout sessions. At the end of the day,
all participants gathered together to highlight their major findings identified during
the breakout sessions, which were subsequently outbriefed to General Hoffman.
Many gaps and seams were identified
during WG11. Some of the more critical
findings are as follows:
Emergency and Standby
Generators
n Long-term refueling plans for emergency
and standby generators are not fully
developed. In the event of a long-term
power outage, refueling of day tanks
becomes a resource constrained initiative.
n Many of the base’s emergency generators
are oversized, resulting in increased
operations and maintenance costs,
probability of load transfer failure,
decreased life, or premature failure.
n The emergency and standby generators
are not always tested against full facility
loads. This is due to the fact that agencies
authorized these generators typically do not
want their facility put on back-up generation
during monthly testing of generators.
Generators are either not tested at all or
against load banks, which do not test the
reliability of the entire system.
n Non-mission critical facilities have no
plans or provision for connecting standby
generators. Non-mission critical facilities
may become mission critical as outages
persist; it may become necessary to
connect a generator to a once non-mission
critical facility.
Energy Security Issues
n Microgrids with manual control are current
options for assured electrical power and
are used at many Air Force bases. Using
this concept, several larger generators at
an installation provide power for several
mission-critical facilities, improving
efficiency and reliability of power.
