Southland Energy and Georgia Power Complete Construction Phase of a Utility Energy Service Contract

Robins Air Force Base, GA – Southland Energy and Georgia Power, our utility partner, completed the implementation phase of a Utility Energy Service Contract (UESC) for the Air Logistics Complex (ALC) at Robins Air Force Base, GA.

Following a rigorous development and design process, Southland Energy and Georgia Power collaborated and built a strong relationship with ALC to develop and implement a comprehensive program to address the key challenges, ultimately providing efficiency across 40 surrounding mission critical aviation maintenance and test and research facilities totaling one million square feet. The culmination of the collaborative design process was a $26,737,788 UESC which consists of two major compressed air plants and distribution systems, and the required electrical power systems to achieve 48 percent energy reduction and 99.99 percent reliability with 2N redundancy.

Leveraging significant industrial and mission critical facility experience and expertise, Southland Energy was able to determine the key measurements needed in order to provide early an accurate costs and savings along with a lifecycle energy and operations and maintenance analysis specific to the ALC.

Southland Energy's goal of the UESC with Georgia Power was to produce energy efficient compressed air plants that provide reliable dry air with 100 percent compressor redundancy to facilities at the ALC. "Construction within an active flight line and secure area was very challenging," said Quinn Phillips, Project Manager, Southland Industries. "The requirement that all work was completed while the existing compressed air service remained 100 percent operational added significant complexity. The construction and ALC teams on site collaborated and prepared daily to ensure continuous availability of compressed air 24/7 to support aircraft readiness goals during the construction."

In addition to the new compressed air plants, this project includes repair of significant leaks throughout the distribution system, heated blower purge desiccant air dryers, reconditioned 30,000-gallon receiver, new breathing air system, HVAC improvements, and new motor controls. A new Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system will control the plant and is integrated with the new electrical sub-station distribution gear. The new SCADA system will be used for performance tracking and diagnostics and has been designed to complement an ongoing base-wide Utility Monitoring and Control Systems (UMCS) program.

"The implementation of the UESC provides resilience, mission assurance, significant operational flexibility and most importantly eliminates costly outages of the system significantly impacting daily production rates," said Damon West of the ALC Energy office. "ALC now has reliable compressed air to allow us to meet our mission requirements."