The Department of the Navy held an Interactive Energy Reliability and Resiliency Discussion with Industry partners at the Navy League Sea, Air, Space 2015 Exposition on April 14, 2015. This event provided an opportunity for Navy leaders and industry representatives to exchange innovative ideas. As a follow-up, the Navy requests additional input from industry on strategies to integrate resiliency, reliability, and energy security elements into potential projects at Department of the Navy installations. In accordance with FAR-15.201(b) “The purpose of exchanging information is to improve the understanding of Government requirements and industry capabilities, thereby allowing potential offerors to judge whether or how they can satisfy the Government’s requirements, and enhancing the Government’s ability to obtain quality supplies and services.? This RFI is neither a Request for Proposal nor a Request for Quotation, and does not in any way constitute and/or represent a solicitation or a promise to issue a solicitation in the future. Furthermore, this RFI does not in any way commit the Government to contract for any supplies and/or services whatsoever. The Government is not seeking proposals; instead, the Government is only seeking information related to current industry capabilities to meet requirements discussed herein. Organizations that intend to respond to this RFI are hereby advised that the Government will not pay for and/or reimburse any of the respondents’ costs or expenses related to the development and submission of this RFI. Accordingly, all costs associated with the respondents’ efforts in relation to responding to this RFI are solely and expressly the responsibility of the respondents. The Government does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this request or to otherwise pay for the information solicited. While the Government intends to review this information for future acquisition planning purposes, it will not release any information about your approach that might in any way compromise your competitive posture. The Government will not use any information provided to level your approach relative to another competitor. The responses should not contain any proprietary information however if any information is company sensitive, all information shall be marked accordingly. The Government will not be liable for or suffer any consequential damages for any proprietary information not properly identified. Company sensitive information will be safeguarded in accordance with the applicable Government regulations. Responses to this RFI will not be returned. Respondents will not be notified of the result of the review. Failure to respond to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future associated request for proposal/request for quotation that may be issued. Information provided in no way binds the Government to solicit or award a contract. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOps) website: www.fbo.gov. It is the potential vendor’s responsibility to monitor this site for the release of any follow-on information. HOW TO RESPOND: Please submit your response to this RFI via email no later than 4:00PM E.S.T [May 8, 2015] to the following point of contact:
contact@example.gov. Interactive Energy Reliability and Resiliency Discussion - 1. Acquisition Strategy • What are the benefits and risks/limitations for various traditional acquisition strategies? o Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) – DOE or USACE o Utility Energy Service Contract (UESC) – Utility Supplier o Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) o Enhanced Use Lease (EUL) o Design Bid Build (Fixed Price Contract) o Design Build (Fixed Price Contract) • What about contract terms? What about construct only vs. construct-operate? • Are there alternative contracting methods that you’ve successfully utilized? • Have you utilized a combination of methods such as Design-Build (MILCON) and ESPC? 2. Acquisition Considerations • How have you been able to generate a high ROI for resiliency and reliability? • How have you been able to monetize energy security, cyber security, and or resiliency? • What Interconnect Agreement risk factors should we consider? • What Improvements to performance measurement, verification and guarantees should we consider? • How can we best encourage the use of innovative technologies? 3. Installation Selection Considerations • What factors in base selection should we consider to make reliability investments financially attractive? (e.g. large amount of critical load, need of modernization, high cost of electricity) • If we’ve captured most low-hanging energy conservation measures (ECMs), what should we consider to support resilience and reliability? • How have you incorporated microgrid operations into financed energy contracts? • How have you incorporated demand savings and storage cost effectively into projects? • What are some functional and financial challenges with incorporating existing and new generation sources into a functioning micro grid (e.g. islanding mission critical assets)? 4. Technical Considerations • Using SAIDI and SAIFI data, what are economical and feasible outage duration and frequency to trigger onsite generation? • Where are the benefits and risks of traditional backup generation vs central power onsite with micro grid investment? • How have you economically addressed Cyber Security to harden the power supply infrastructure? What agreements are feasible with power suppliers? • How have you mitigated weather related outages? 5. Renewable Energy and Storage Challenges • How can we improve utilization of renewable energy generation for backup power? • How have you been able to overcome frequency and variability issues associated with renewables as backup power? • What are some challenges with integrating renewable efforts of others into a resiliency microgrid (e.g. islanding, frequency variation)? • What are some challenges and considerations for requiring energy storage? 6. Behavior Considerations • Since we bill our customers by the energy unit (e.g. kWh) similar to industry, how have use that process to address resiliency and reliability investments and behavior? • Have you seen examples of special rates for higher levels of service? • What are some billing or rewards tools that you have seen to support higher level of services or encourage certain behaviors related to energy use? 7. Sustainment • With the rapid progression technology, how have you ensured a highly trained and performing workforce? • What are some considerations for long-term sustainment of the resiliency components? • What are some other considerations that we didn’t talk about (e.g. environmental, tax considerations, Public utilities commissions, etc.)
