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Tinker AFB receives $300,000 from OG&E for achieving energy savings milestone

  • Published
  • By Clayton Cummins

Tinker Air Force Base received more than $300,000 from Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company, recently, for achieving significant energy savings.

Tinker AFB is working with OG&E and its energy management program partner, CLEAResult, to reduce electricity consumption on the base.  Tinker AFB is participating in the CLEAResult Continuous Energy Improvement (CEI) Program that identifies electricity saving opportunities and quantifies the electricity savings of electricity saving projects.  Recently completed projects, have culminated in a significant reduction of electricity consumption that resulted in a $306,993.21 rebate check being presented to Tinker Air Force Base June 7, 2024.

“We were first introduced to OG&E’s utility rebate program through our energy savings performance contracts,” said Joey Hunter, Tinker AFB’s Base Energy Manager. “In those contracts, the electricity rebate was negotiated up front as part of the funding to pay for the contract. Those contracts are rather unique, the government actually goes out and borrows money to pay for improvements that will save energy in the future.  We use a master Energy Saving Performance Contract that is overseen by the Department of Energy to work with approved Energy Service Companies to implement the energy saving projects.  Examples of past improvements have been upgrades to more energy efficient chillers and HVAC systems, retrofits of LED lighting and lighting controls, replacements of steam boilers with high efficiency hot water boilers and enhancements to the building envelope.” 

One of Tinker’s Mission Partners, the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex (OC-ALC), has an energy program that closely monitors their significant energy consumption areas and focuses on ways to continuously improve their energy efficiency.  The 76th Commodities Maintenance Group (CMXG), has a high-energy consumption process that generates high temperature, high pressure compressed air needed to test engine accessories. 

“For this rebate check, a lot of credit goes to the OC-ALC for energy saving efforts that they’ve made to their engine accessory testing process.  This has been a heavy focus area for them,” said Hunter. “They looked at their process and said ‘hey, how can we make changes to how we perform this task to make this more energy efficient?’ They have put a lot of thought and effort into it.”

OG&E, their energy management program partner, CLEAResult and Tinker are continuing to look at ways to further reduce electricity usage on the base and improve the base energy efficiency. 

“We are going to continue to press forward because there are more opportunities on Tinker,” said Hunter. “We are constantly looking at ways we can conserve energy as we focus on energy resiliency these days and how to keep the mission alive and thriving forward. There is more energy savings to come!”