Clear Air Force Station is the oldest missile warning site in North America. The installation supports the 13th Space Warning Squadron and the 213th Space Warning Squadron, Alaska Air National Guard. The 13th Space Warning Squadron is one of seven geographically separated units of the 21st Space Wing, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. Its mission is to provide combat capabilities through missile warning and missile defense and through space surveillance for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, U.S. Strategic Command, and the Missile Defense Agency. The mission of the 213th Space Warning Squadron is to operate and support the early warning radar. Since January 2001, these missions have been accomplished through the use of a Solid State Phased Array Radar System, which replaced the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System that had been in place since the installation became operational in 1961. The radar’s primary mission is to detect missile launches to determine whether there are incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles or sea-launched ballistic missiles threatening the United States or its allies. Its secondary mission is to detect, track, identify, and generate positional data for more than 9,500 manmade objects that are in orbit in space. Approximately 300 active-duty service members, Air National Guard personnel, DOD civilians, and contract employees support the missions at Clear Air Force Station. The developed portion of Clear Air Force Station can be separated into four main areas: (1) the composite area, where most administrative, recreational, and living quarters are located; (2) the camp area, where civil engineering, maintenance shops, and security police offices are located; (3) the radar site; and (4) the old technical site, where the old radar and associated support buildings and the plant are located. Other facilities associated with the plant include a coal yard, a cooling pond, and a rail spur—owned and operated by the Air Force—along which coal is delivered to the installation by Air Force-owned and Air Force-operated locomotives. (See fig. 1 for a map of Clear Air Force Station.) The existing combined heat and power plant at Clear Air Force Station is owned by the Air Force and became operational in 1961. The plant burns coal in three coal-fired boilers to produce steam, which generates power through the use of steam turbine generators. As a byproduct of electricity generation, the plant delivers steam to the installation for heating via underground steam lines. The plant has three steam turbine generators, each capable of producing 7.5 megawatts of power, for a total capacity of 22.5 megawatts. The boilers and turbines are interconnected so that any boiler can be linked to any turbine generator (see fig. 2). The Air Force’s standard operating procedure is to run two boilers and two turbine generators at the plant concurrently in order to provide backup in the event that one component fails and to better control the power system’s operating frequency. According to Air Force officials, having readily available backup steam in the winter is important because the start-up time for a boiler is about 4 to 5 hours, which is enough time for water pipes to freeze and cause damage to facilities in the meantime. Each boiler and generator runs for 8 months each year, and the boilers are rotated out of service for inspection and maintenance. In addition to the redundancy provided by running two boilers and two generators, the installation has a 300-kilowatt generator capable of providing electricity to the composite area in the event of an outage. A separate emergency power plant, which became operational in July 2012, would provide electricity and electrical heat for the radar in the event of failure of the central power plant. The Air Force currently does not have backup for heat in the composite area, which hosts most administrative, recreational, and housing facilities on the installation. The energy demand at Clear Air Force Station has decreased from when the plant first became operational, due to the radar replacement in 2001. The previous Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar required 5 megawatts of power, while the new Solid State Phased Array Radar System requires only 1.1 megawatts of power—approximately 80 percent less. Currently, the total energy demand at the installation ranges from 3 megawatts in the summer to 6 megawatts in the winter, of which approximately 1 megawatt is needed to run the plant itself. In recent years, the plant has burned an average of about 53,900 tons of coal per year. Due to the Air Force’s standard operating procedure of running two boilers and two turbine generators concurrently to provide redundancy and backup, the plant’s energy production typically exceeds the demand, The excess power—that is, power resulting in excess steam and power.that is not consumed—is delivered to a load bank, a device that converts the power to heat and dissipates the heat into the air. Air Force Space Command data show that, in 2012, the command led the Air Force in facilities energy consumption, with the highest energy costs and the greatest energy consumption per square foot—a metric used by the Air Force to ascertain energy efficiency—among the major commands (see fig. 3). Facilities in Air Force Space Command consume approximately 98 percent of the command’s energy because its missions are facility-centric. consumes over 16 percent of the command’s facilities energy and has a facilities energy cost per square foot that is approximately twice the command’s average. Further, the installation’s average energy use per square foot is approximately seven times greater than the command’s average (1.39 million vs. 0.20 million BTUs). DOD defines facility energy to include energy needed to power fixed installations and nontactical vehicles. The Air Force has identified several projects that must be completed before it can close the power plant. These include constructing a new electric system connecting the installation to the local power grid, a heat system that will replace the heat function currently provided by the plant to the composite area, and a 1-megawatt backup generator to provide power to the composite area in the event of an outage on the local power grid. The portion of the power grid to which the installation will be connected is operated by Golden Valley Electric Association and is part of Alaska’s Railbelt transmission system, a single transmission line spanning 600 miles. According to a 2010 Department of Energy study, power exchanges among Alaska’s utilities are limited, and each public utility operates independently of others in different areas of Alaska. Golden Valley Electric Association is the only public utility located within the Clear Air Force Station service area. Figure 4 is a map of the Alaska Railbelt Transmission System near Clear Air Force Station that shows the locations of the installation, the Golden Valley Electric Association transmission line, and the proposed grid interconnection project. By September 2013, the Air Force had refined its total cost estimate for the transmission and heat-system projects.Air Force awarded a firm-fixed price order for an estimated $5.2 million against an existing General Services Administration contract with Golden Valley Electric Association, the local utility that provides power to the area where the installation is located. (The Air Force issued a 120-day suspension of work order for the contract in October 2013. The suspension was extended in February 2014 for another 60 days.) As part In late September 2013, the of the Air Force contract, the utility will construct a switching substation at the power line closest to the installation and a 3-mile-long transmission line that will go from the switching substation to another substation that will be located on Clear Air Force Station. The transmission line and the switching substation will be owned and maintained by the utility. After construction, the Air Force will obtain electricity from the utility. Separately from the contract with Golden Valley Electric Association, but as part of the electric system, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to award a design-build contract for installation of the electrical intertie, which would include a transformer, switchgear, and a distribution substation, to distribute power from the new transmission line to facilities on the installation. intertie, and this portion of the power system will be located on the installation. The contract to be awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would also include a new heat system to replace the heat function currently served by the plant and a 1-megawatt generator capable of providing power to the composite area in the case of an outage on the local power grid. Heat and backup power are already in place for the radar site. The steam heating system would be owned and managed by the Air Force. The Air Force will own and manage the electrical The Air Force has plans to carry out these projects primarily using fiscal year 2013 funds from the Energy Conservation Investment Program, which is overseen by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). To the extent that funds from that source do not fully cover the costs of the projects, Air Force officials have said that they plan to make up the difference by using savings from other fiscal year 2012 funds that were previously provided by OSD. Air Force officials also said that costs may change as the Air Force enters into negotiations with contractors to refine the requirements of the components and design. A design-build contract is a contract with a single entity to deliver both design and construction of a project. The information provided in this report regarding cost is a subset of the information provided in our earlier, restricted report. The Clear Air Force Station plant is required to meet state and federal regulations related to air quality, among other environmental regulations. The plant currently operates under an air quality control operating permit issued by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. This permit limits each of the three boilers at the plant to producing a maximum of 85,000 pounds of steam per hour. Further, under the permit, the Air Force has chosen to limit its coal consumption to fewer than 135,000 tons per year and has taken other steps to avoid being classified as a major source of hazardous air pollutants.