National Academies Press: OpenBook

Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit (2021)

Chapter: Appendix B - Airport Microgrid Summit Summary

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix B - Airport Microgrid Summit Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26165.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix B - Airport Microgrid Summit Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26165.
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Page 36
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B - Airport Microgrid Summit Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26165.
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Page 37
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B - Airport Microgrid Summit Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26165.
×
Page 37
Page 38
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B - Airport Microgrid Summit Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26165.
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Page 38

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34 A P P E N D I X B Airport Microgrid Summit Summary Airport Microgrid Summit Overview On March 6 and 7, 2019, the ACRP Project 10-26 team hosted an airport microgrid stakeholder workshop in Ithaca, NY. The workshop was developed in partnership with Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport (ITH) and Tompkins County Legislature. The workshop was intended to inform the development of the Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit by cultivating useful insights and essential questions from participants, while simultaneously helping ITH align its stakeholders and key decision makers on a path forward towards their microgrid project development. The insights and lessons that informed toolkit development are summarized below. Workshop Insights Applicable to the Toolkit The Airport Microgrid Summit provided the project team with numerous valuable insights that will inform the stakeholder module of the toolkit as well as lessons and best practices on how airports can conduct their own stakeholder meetings that will be contained in the toolkit. These insights are summarized below: Stakeholder Meeting Guidance • There are three overarching phases to execute an airport microgrid project: 1. Alignment and education, 2. Planning, and 3. Execution and implementation. A stakeholder meeting could be valuable in any or all of these phases. Stakeholders relevant to each phase may change as the project progresses. The stakeholder module of the toolkit will be oriented to these three phases rather than focused on a single workshop or a single phase. • A formal facilitated workshop may not be necessary for success, but a convening meeting with the stakeholders is critical. – Note: While the ITH meeting was termed a ‘summit,’ which may carry the connotation of being an exclusive meeting for leaders, in actuality it was a workshop with active participation from all types and levels of stakeholders.

Airport Microgrid Summit Summary 35 emissions, then it broadens the stakeholder group to the community. If the airport is planning for emergency management in disasters, then local, state, and federal requirements may come into play and those constituents should be represented. Project Champions • It is critical for an airport microgrid project to have a project champion who has access to key decision makers and the resources to move the project forward. – The stakeholder module can provide recommendations on which airport stakeholders make the best champions and what types of qualities they ideally possess. • It is important for the project champion to identify who the key decision makers are at each stage of project development and to identify the resources he/she will need to execute. – The toolkit will identify the different types of decision makers at the different project stages and recommendations for who should be engaged when. Stakeholder Roles and Education • It is critical to the success of a workshop to identify the correct participants and to accurately identify the role they are playing in the workshop. Prior to a meeting, facilitators and/or the project champion should decide a stakeholder’s role, whether as an educator, as an advocate for the project, or as a decision maker. – Relatedly, it is important to determine the role of commercial developers and consultants prior to the meeting. For example, are they present to share experience and technical expertise or to offer their services? This can help avoid potential airport procurement conflicts of interest and avoid unwanted sales pitches. It is important for the host airport to state that the purpose of the meeting is problem solving and that this is not the time to secure business development opportunities. • Visual aids are particularly helpful in generating collective understanding and transitioning to a plan that meets the needs of multiple stakeholders and integrates different points of view. These can be especially useful in the planning stage (e.g., a map/drawing of the airport, its energy resources and critical loads, and potential microgrid component locations that stakeholders can react to and engage with). Goal Setting • An airport should consider what its resilience needs are before assuming a microgrid is the solution and moving into the project development phases. An airport should identify its resilience requirements and measure them against its other objectives (e.g., reducing carbon emissions, reducing energy costs, etc.). Understanding the tradeoffs of these objectives will help the airport determine if a microgrid is the solution to move forward with. The toolkit will seek to provide guidance on this question. • During the alignment and education phase, scoping out what the airport wants to accomplish is key. If enhanced resilience is the goal, then the stakeholder group may be smaller. If the goal is reducing CO2

36 Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit Ithaca Tompkins Airport Microgrid Summit Complete Documentation The content that follows covers planning for the pilot Ithaca Airport Summit event that occurred March 6-7, 2019. It is provided as a record of the research, and it also informed the design of the Stakeholder Module for the final Toolkit. Workshop Objectives The formalized objectives of the workshop that were shared with participants as part of the event invitation and discussed individually with each registered participant during needs assessment interviews (see ‘Needs assessment interviews’ section below for explanation) are provided below:9 1. Develop a common understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with developing a microgrid at ITH, including: • The unique requirements for energy assurance at airport facilities. • How to transition from a microgrid project vision and study to project development and implementation. • How to engage communities and facilities “beyond the fence line” to support resilience and energy independence adjacent to the Airport. 2. Strengthen participants’ ability to work together to achieve their goals with respect to the microgrid. 3. Identify tools and resources to support microgrid project development at ITH and airports around the country. 4. Clarify post-meeting actions, as well as roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders. – There will likely be a need to educate on the definition of a microgrid, what existing projects look like, the energy landscape of the airport and region they are working in, and what some of the big opportunities and challenges are in that landscape. It is also important to get everyone up to speed on existing energy service provision at the airport (how the airport currently uses, procures, and/or stores energy) and what constraints exist. • One of our lessons-learned is that stakeholders in the ITH process were at various phases in project development. While some needed education, many others were thirsty to begin planning. This misalignment of critical stakeholders made the workshop as a whole less efficient than would be ideal. Therefore it is important for all stakeholders present at a meeting to have enough information for each phase. • If a project champion chooses to utilize third-party facilitation for the meeting, it is critical to achieve collective clarity on the role of the facilitator during and after the meeting. • Knowledge of microgrids varies greatly among stakeholders. Educational materials on microgrids and the proposed microgrid solution at the airport should be shared with stakeholders to level-set prior to a working meeting. Relevant stakeholders should all be aligned on basic facts. – In meeting pre-work, such as a stakeholder survey, the project champion or meeting facilitators can determine where the various stakeholders are in their microgrid understanding, and over the course of the project phases should track where they are and determine who should be involved in each phase’s meetings.

Airport Microgrid Summit Summary 37 11:15 – 12:30 • Exploring aspirations, barriers, and use cases for a microgrid at ITH • Identifying hopes and concerns • Evaluating tradeoffs and beliefs 12:30 – 12:45 Defining our priority questions 12:45 – 1:30 Lunch 1:30 – 2:30 Working Groups Session 1 2:30 – 3:30 • Learning Sessions 2 • Lessons learned from NY Prize, what’s next and state incentive options • Microgrid modelling • When everyone’s important, who’s most important for airport microgrids? 3:30 – 3:45 Break 3:45 – 4:05 Working groups touch base 4:05 – 4:35 Working group status updates and coaching 4:35 – 4:45 Reflection 4:45 – 5:00 Check-out and close 6:00 Optional no-host dinner Table B-1. Airport microgrid summit agenda. Day 1 (8:30 – 5:00) Time Activity 8:30 – 9:00 Breakfast and Registration 9:00 – 10:10 • Check-in and introductions • Objectives, agenda, and ground rules • Current projects and past microgrid experience at ITH • Identifying participants’ preliminary questions 10:10 – 10:50 • Learning Sessions 1 • Microgrids 101 • Risks to airport energy systems and RMI’s microgrid toolkit • What we can learn from DoD energy resilience and microgrids 10:50 – 11:15 Break Agenda Design Process and Original Agenda The workshop agenda was developed iteratively and was informed by the workshop objectives as well as the needs assessment interviews that were conducted with each registered participant. The agenda was designed to enable a structured facilitation and coaching process that maximizes the active participation of participants while minimizing “lecture-style presentations.” This type of process has the unique benefit of maximizing the potential for barrier identification and innovative solution generation by leveraging the collective expertise of all stakeholders present at the workshop. The original agenda is provided in Table B-1 below—the actual agenda varied slightly due to on-the-fly adjustments based on requests from participants for more plenary discussion and less small group work.

38 Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit Table B-2. Needs assessment interview template. # Question 1 Tell us a little bit about your role and organization, and your experience to date with Ithaca Tompkins airport and their microgrid effort? 2 [As needed based on first question] How does the planning or execution of a microgrid at ITH impact your work? 3 The current objectives of the workshop are [see above]. What are your reactions to these objectives? 4 What would make this workshop successful from your point of view? 5 What would make this workshop unsuccessful from your point of view? 6 What is something you don’t have now that you would like to have by the end of the workshop? 7 What is a question that I should have asked you, but haven’t yet? 8 Do you still plan to join us at the workshop? Are you available to be there for the entirety of the workshop? Needs Assessment Interviews Prior to the workshop, our team conducted “needs assessment” interviews with each registered participant (with the exception of a few who either did not respond or were not available) to learn more about their experience with microgrids, their interest in the Summit, and their vision for a successful workshop. The intention behind these interviews was to learn from participants what was most important to them in a potential workshop to help inform our agenda design process and to ensure that the objectives were aligned with those of the participants. It also provided a chance to have a one-on-one conversation with participants, to help build their trust in our project team and garner buy-in for the value of the workshop. The template that was used to guide the needs assessment interviews is shown in Table B-2 below. Day 2 (8:00 – 1:00) Time Activity 8:00 Breakfast available 8:30 Check-in and agenda 8:45 – 10:45 Working Groups Sessions 2 & 3 Coaching and Feedback 10:45 – 12:45 Consolidation and Synthesis Timeline Roles and responsibilities Next steps 12:45 – 1:00 Check out 1:00 Adjourn

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Awareness of the vulnerability of the country’s existing electrical system has increased with the frequency of short-term blackouts and long-term utility outages. Power outages impact airport operations by causing flight delays, extended layovers, disruptions in cargo operations, loss of revenue, and limitations in airports’ ability to provide emergency support.

The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Research Report 228: Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit addresses site-specific criteria for airports of all types and sizes.

The implementation toolkit is a suite of reference materials, including an online tool that can be used to obtain an analysis and determine feasibility of a microgrid for your airport.

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