On December 17, 2017, a fire at an underground electrical facility damaged two substations that serve Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport — then and now the world’s busiest airport. The resulting 11-hour-long power outage led to the cancellation of nearly 1,200 flights.
The Atlanta outage, and another that disrupted power for several hours at Los Angeles International Airport in June of this year, is motivating airport operators across the United States to take steps to ensure an uninterruptible supply of power.
In this quest for more reliable power, an increasing number of airports are turning to microgrids — self-contained grids capable of operating independently from the traditional grid. In the latest such project, Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) will become the first major American airport to be 100 percent powered by a microgrid.
In an interview, Tom Woodrow, VP of engineering, Allegheny County Airport Authority, said being able to maintain operations and always be open for business was top of mind for Pittsburgh’s airport.
“The primary goal was to avoid being the next Atlanta or LA and to be able to get that resilience and reliability. And, secondarily, to reduce the cost of electricity to the airport authority and our tenants,” he said.
The microgrid will include 22.5 megawatts of generating capacity, with 20 megawatts coming from natural gas-fired generators and 2.5 megawatts from a ground-mounted solar photovoltaic installation.
Construction of the microgrid is scheduled to take 19 months, with the system expected to be online and fully commissioned in June 2021.
Numerous airports embracing microgrids
Pittsburgh International Airport’s microgrid continues a trend that has gained momentum since Atlanta’s 2017 outage, said Isaac Maze-Rothstein, a microgrid analyst with Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.
Atlanta’s outage has led to a “shift in thinking for airport operators,” Maze-Rothstein said.
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