Hybrid Power for the Frontline

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/35080/?a=f

 

The U.S. Armed Forces are heavily burdened by the financial and tactical costs of transporting fuel to the battlefield. This July, in an effort to address the problem, the United States Marine Corps will deploy a pair of diesel generators coupled with powerful batteries to frontline troops in Afghanistan. The hybrid power systems should cut by 50 to 70 percent the amount of fuel needed to generate electricity, according to the manufacturer, Earl Energy of Portsmouth, Virginia.

The generators that U.S. military camps currently use operate inefficiently because they need to handle ocassional peaks in demand. "You may have a 10-kilowatt generator that at any time is only producing 1.5 kilowatts of power to satisfy its load," says Doug Moorehead, president of Earl Energy. "So you are wasting 8.5 kilowatts of power that you aren't storing for later use," he says.