Green energy is going to war.
Starting in June, defense companies including Thales SA and Multicon Solar AG will join NATO to test the military’s ability to use renewable power in combat and humanitarian operations.
About 1,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers will spend 12 days deploying wind turbines, solar panels and self-contained power grids in Hungary, according to Susanne Michaelis, the group’s action officer for smart energy.
The soldiers will test small solar power plants that open within 10 minutes like flowers to the sun, highly insulated tents and solar-powered battery chargers -- technologies that displace conventional fuels which must be delivered along vulnerable supply lines. The testing follows the wounding or killing of 3,000 U.S. soldiers in attacks on fuel and water convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to NATO.
“A lot of people are crippled or die transporting fuel and water,” Michaelis, who is helping prepare NATO’s Smart Energy camp in Hungary, said by telephone. “If you attack a fuel truck, it explodes and burns all fuel. There’s no stopping it. If you shoot at solar cells, one may break, but it doesn’t explode and all the other cells will still be working.”
NATO soldiers will conduct war-game scenarios that simulate power cuts, flooded roads and diesel and water contamination using three airdrops of “smart energy” equipment at the camp in June, according to a NATO presentation provided to Bloomberg.
Thales’s U.S. unit, Thales Defense & Security, plans to showcase its lightweight battery chargers that can run on solar power and recycle electricity from wasted single-use batteries, Merdod Badie, a director at Thales, said in a telephone interview from Clarksburg, Maryland.
Military Customers
The number of companies looking at the market has grown from a “handful” three years ago, according to Michaelis. Large military customers offer power producers a market that is more resilient to the ups and downs of the global economy than private industry.
Smartflower Energy Technology GmbH will deliver its instant solar-power plants, carbon-fiber units with petal-shaped panels that can be operated by a single person and open to the morning sun. NATO command has so far been active in sunny countries, Michaelis said.