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U.S. airport sustainability officials discuss energy resilience at the Airports Council International-North America annual conference in Philadelphia.
PHILADELPHIA—Airports view solar power as a source of energy resilience, not just a means of reducing emissions and lowering electricity costs, according to airport sustainability officials.
Executives overseeing U.S. airport environmental strategies, speaking at the Airports Council International-North America (ACI-NA) annual conference in Philadelphia, said on-site solar-powered microgrids can enable airports to be more energy self-sufficient and serve as a fail-safe when other sources of power are disrupted.
A $14 million solar-powered microgrid that went operational in April at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (SJU) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is now providing around 5% of SJU’s electricity needs, according to the airport’s top sustainability official.
Energy is collected from a 4,000-panel solar array installed on the roof of an automobile parking facility. The system has 2 megawatts of solar capacity.
Jamie Pabon, sustainability director at SJU operator Aerostar Airport Holdings, said the airport has been interested in alternative sources of energy since Hurricane Maria caused widespread blackouts on the island in 2017.
While the airport is seeking benefits in the emission reductions and potential cost savings solar power provides, it has really focused on “resiliency and redundancy before sustainability,” Pabon said during a sustainability panel discussion at the ACI-NA conference. “Some areas on the island had no power for about a year [in the aftermath of the hurricane]. So [it was] a very challenging time. And even though power came back, power in Puerto Rico has not been stable ever since,” he said.
Following the hurricane, emergency generators enabled relief flights to arrive at SJU within 24 hr. and a small number of commercial flights to restart within 48 hr. But the terminal essentially had no power for 10 days.
SJU has since worked on modifying and replacing emergency generators for greater resilience. “Now we're diversifying more into sustainable energy,” Pabon said, citing the rooftop solar system.
Critical systems
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) in Texas is actively exploring implementing a solar-powered microgrid. “If you take a step back and think about airports and how they operate, think about some of the most critical systems that you have there,” said Robert Horton, DFW's environmental affairs vice president and a speaker on the panel. “You have lighting systems, communications systems, signage, wayfinding. All of those things depend on one critical system. That's energy. For an airport, energy is a function. It’s a function that we depend on in order to maintain the operations that we have.
“From an airport perspective, if you look at what's happened across the globe over the last several years—the disruptions we've seen in Spain, Portugal, at Heathrow—energy systems are very critical, and being able to manage how well they can provide or sustain you through disruptions becomes a priority,” he said.
DFW is considering installing a solar-powered microgrid in part because “redundant substations alone aren't good enough,” Horton said. He suggested taking things “one step further” and considering “all of the critical links” in the airport's infrastructure and where new energy systems can be embedded to provide aid in times of disruption. The need for “a better backup in place” has pushed the airport to start exploring microgrids, he said.
Horton noted “very real hurdles” in the ability to implement solar-powered systems at airports. “How we insert [solar panels], where we attach them, how we procure them becomes very challenging, especially when you look at the landscape from a regulatory standpoint and a procurement standpoint,” he said.
For one, he said, airports need to successfully conduct a glare study that proves to the FAA that the light reflecting off solar panels will not affect pilots’ vision.
Pabon said the glare study for the SJU rooftop system was “pretty straightforward.” However, he noted fast-changing technology could affect the validity of the results over time. “The technology is changing so quickly that the glare that's emitted by these panels is being reduced exponentially,” he said. “So if you have issues with glare that date back to a study conducted more than a year or two, I would go ahead and do that study again.”
Space constraints
Finding places to put solar panels is another challenge, particularly on rooftops. “We had an issue where we wanted to make sure we weren't voiding the warranty on our car park roof,” said Pabon. “So we had to be very specific about how those solar panels were to be installed.”
He added that SJU would like to add more solar capacity at the airport, but determining where to put panels is difficult. “Space is certainly one of the biggest constraints,” he said. “We have a lot of roof area at the airport, but the roofs are filled with infrastructure, including HVAC equipment and different types of structures that get affected during heavy storms. Hurricane Maria affected a big portion of our terminal roof.”
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) has been looking at the feasibility of installing solar panels to provide energy, but finding the right spot is a potential roadblock. The first issue to consider is “the condition of whatever location you want to put the panels on,” ATL Sustainability Senior Director Quinta Warren said. “On some of the buildings right now, we find that the roofs are not in a condition where we can actually put the panels on today, and so we have to look at the schedule for the buildings and when will roofs be repaired or replaced, and that might delay us being able to put panels on those buildings.”
Solar power in some cases is deployed by operators at an airport even if the airport itself does not use the alternative energy source to produce electricity. For example, DHL’s $84.5 million, 100-ft.2 cargo facility at ATL is 50% powered by 65,000 ft.2 of rooftop solar panels.
The airport environmental heads said cost is also a constraint, with airports needing to make a return-on-investment case to justify a solar microgrid system. “The return on investment of some of this solar infrastructure takes a pretty long time,” Pabon said.
Preparations to set up the SJU system included the glare study approved by the FAA and erecting steel columns to enable the 113,200 ft.2 parking structure to support the rooftop array. “It was a lot more expensive because it has that steel structure for the carport to be able to park underneath,” Pabon said.
The SJU microgrid is expected to reduce the airport’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2,100 metric tons annually, according to Fortress Power, which provided two battery energy storage systems for the microgrid.
“We're working now on a project to evaluate the feasibility of providing solar power and battery backup for our runway and taxiway lighting and signage,” Pabon said.
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