HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah — The Ogden Air Logistics Complex has made energy management a formal and permanent part of their operations as they strive to reduce energy consumption and reduce costs for the base, to their customers and, ultimately, for taxpayers.
The Ogden ALC is responsible for maintenance of many elite aircraft including the F-35 Lightning II, F-22 Raptor, and F-16 Falcon; along with repair on an estimated three thousand high-tech components for other mature and proven weapon systems.
This maintenance and overhaul requires a lot of electrical power and puts a strain on the installations energy budget.
The Complex is the largest energy consumer on the base using 51 percent of the base’s energy, enough to power 4,000 homes in Utah.
Signed on March 19, 2015, presidential Executive Order 13693 directed all federal facilities to reduce energy consumption by 25 percent between 2015 and 2025 and as a result, the Ogden ALC increased efforts to reduce its consumption to help accomplish Hill’s reduction goal.
As part of this ten-year effort, Ogden ALC adopted the international standard for Continuous Energy Improvement known as ISO 50001 into its way of business to ensure its operations were optimized.
ISO-50001 certification is built on the principles of continuous process improvement. It will help the Complex formalize an energy policy, institute an Energy Management System, review energy baseline usage, implement energy improvements, rollout energy training and establish operational controls.
By achieving ISO-50001 certification, the ALC will ensure that the energy performance improvement effort persists through personnel changes and reassignments and that the energy management effort belongs to the entire organization.
Much of the ALC’s savings will come from no-to-low cost energy solutions incorporated into day-to-day operations that will be done more effectively and efficiently.
As part of ISO-50001, an employee suggestion system is being established so effective energy saving ideas can be implemented and make a positive difference.
This approach identifies non-capital energy efficiency projects as well as those that require capital creating an added bonus for the Complex.
“We are doing a lot of hardware upgrades around the ALC to reduce our energy costs,” said Aaron Erickson, OO-ALC energy manager. “The ISO-50001 program will complement those hardware upgrades by driving us to think about how we can improve our core processes to lower our energy consumption. I think that people working here know how to save energy. We have just never really asked them before.”
Erickson also connected the ISO-50001 energy management effort to other ALC programs.
“Over the years, we’ve done things to improve performance in quality, safety, and flow time by listening to the people who do the work. Now we are going to do the same with energy,” Erickson said.
The energy management system will encompass the entire ALC with a special focus on two particularly energy intense operations.
Compressed air loop no. 2 serves operations in 14 buildings. The operation and use of compressed air systems consume significant energy, and such an extensive system presents a real opportunity to make this operation more efficient.
In building 220, the aircraft strip and paint hangar is the second candidate for more intense attention. The ALC energy team will be working with building personnel to identify ways to make those operations more energy efficient.
Over time, the goal of the energy management system is to bring most of the Complex operations under this kind of focused attention. But for now, just getting the energy management processes and reporting structure in place is the immediate goal.
“This is truly a significant step to implement energy improvement in the way we do business,” said Erickson.
