Ameresco Leads $30M Geothermal, Energy Efficiency Upgrade at U.S. Army Fort Polk
The U.S. Army has updated electrical infrastructure at Louisiana’s Fort Polk military family housing under a $30 million energy savings performance contract.
Energy infrastructure developers Ameresco and Velarium Energy teamed up on the Fort Polk project. Fort Polk is a large Joint Readiness Training Center and stations thousands of troops and their families.
The energy savings performance contract is designed to save $2.6 million in utility and operational costs per year. The base includes some 3,600 military family homes owned and operated by the Department of Defense’s private partner Corvias.
Ameresco and Velarium Energy combined a comprehensive energy modernization including installation of geothermal infrastructure, including Oklahoma-manufactured ground-source heat pump technology supplied to all homes on the installation. Earlier project phases deployed advanced metering for improved energy management, installation of LED lighting throughout residential units and utilizing the ground-source heat pump technology for optimization of hot water systems.
Altogether the updates could reduce annual electricity consumption by 30%, the companies say.
“This milestone reinforces our commitment to delivering resilient, energy-efficient housing solutions for our military families,” said Nicole Bulgarino, president of Federal Solutions and Power Infrastructure at Ameresco. “Fort Polk is now the first Army installation to complete a full geothermal transition across all homes, strengthening resiliency, and long-term sustainability.”
Ameresco has performed energy efficiency and distributed energy upgrades at numerous U.S. military bases. These include Fort Detrick, Fort Campbell, Los Alamitos, and the Naval Research Laboratory.
Fort Polk serves as the U.S Army combat training center to prepare units for worldwide deployment. The installation covers more than 198,000 acres.