Lockheed-Backed Sandia Labs, Marine Corps Form Microgrid Planning Partnership; Nadine Miner Comments

Sandia National Laboratories has teamed up with the U.S. Marine Corps in an effort to help the service branch draft investment plans on microgrid and renewable energy projects through the use of the Microgrid Design Toolkit.

MDT is a Sandia-built software platform that works to help users evaluate technology options, design microgrids and determine potential trade-offs of a project through search algorithms, Sandia said Thursday.

Sandia researchers Nadine Miner and John Eddy will work with the military branch on the project.

“The modelling and optimization suite of tools that Sandia has developed will provide the Marine Corps with the information they need to help make decisions about which renewable energy technologies to invest in,” Miner said.

“The tools will also help them understand the impacts of their decisions.”

The departments of Energy and Defense sponsored the development of MDT components in order to facilitate the assessment and design of microgrids.

Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sandia Corp. runs the national lab for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration.