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As Texas prepares for another winter that could bring more rolling blackouts, leaders at one of the nation’s largest airports, Dallas Fort Worth International (DFW), are preparing for a future where the electrical grid’s capacity is sure to be tested regularly.
It’s not just the strain posed by the extreme summer heat and winter cold snaps of recent years. What’s expected to drive up airports’ power usage like never before is the shift by car rental companies to electric vehicles.
At DFW, Hertz, for one, expects to convert 85% of its fleet to EVs by 2025, the airport’s CEO, Sean Donohue, said at a recent industry conference. It’s a shift that will contribute to the doubling of the airport’s electricity usage by 2030, Donohue said, even as passenger traffic rises by a comparably lower— but still significant—25% during that time.
Though Hertz’s specific EV transition may ultimately be slowed by cost pressures detailed on the company’s most recent earnings call, the march toward EVs—and the notion that airports will need more electrical power capacity—seems clear.
To combat those demands, DFW officials are currently planning a new microgrid that, once functional, will be capable of powering the airport’s entire rental car facility.
Drawing energy from rooftop solar panels and (eventually) batteries, the setup would allow the airport to generate and store energy on site, and then deploy it when the grid is taxed. Picture a 100-degree day when air-conditioning is at full blast and car rental companies are trying to simultaneously supercharge thousands of vehicles. (EVs themselves will also likely be used to act as batteries, perhaps sending power back into the network and sharing power among vehicles in a rental car lot.)
“Ultimately, we want to have the choice of [choosing] the cheapest and cleanest energy source that we can use at any time of day,” DFW’s vice president of environmental affairs and sustainability Robert Horton shared in an interview with Fast Company.
“So, if the math works out that the on-site resource should be used, we’ll have a digital system that helps us to make that decision,” he says.
EVs, microgrids, and net-zero goals
DFW isn’t the only major U.S. airport rethinking how it will power a more modern rental car facility. And it’s certainly not the only airport that should, according to a report this week by the American Association of Airport Executives’ (AAAE) Airport Consortium on Transformation.
Switching a quarter of rental car vehicles to EVs could see combined car rental facilities—with multiple companies located at one site, as is common at airports—draw as much power as an entire airport terminal, the report says. Once EVs make up half those fleets, the usage could be four times that of a large terminal.
Car rental facilities “urgently need more electricity,” the report cautioned, quoting one (anonymous) industry executive as saying that airports “really need to get their heads wrapped around” the electrification requirements of reaching net-zero.
It’s an especially tall task in Texas, where the extreme weather of recent years has exposed the limitations of the state’s power grid.
“Obviously, we have to make sure we’re getting enough supply,” Donohue told an audience at the November 1 Skift Aviation Forum. “But it’s the resiliency, and how do we make sure, from an airport perspective, that we can build in resiliency.”
A microgrid at New York’s JFK
DFW’s microgrid is currently in the planning stages in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).
The project, which could receive federal funding through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, is a similar concept to the microgrid New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport is planning for its new Terminal One: Starting in 2026, when the first portion of the new terminal is set to open, the microgrid will power the entire building.
Both setups are distinctly unlike the solar farms popping up at airports across the country, as well as from emergency generators that turn on during an outage.
Rather, with a microgrid, energy generated on-site is stored on-site, and then deployed (or not), as dictated by the system’s computer technology. The question, of course, is how big does the solar array have to be in order to cover more than just a small fraction of an airport’s growing needs.
Still, such facilities figure to be increasingly common in the coming years amid the nation’s broader shift to electrical power—both at airports and elsewhere, says Harish Krishnamoorthy, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering.
“Let’s say the power grid is out for some reason. You can still power the local communities—in this case, the airport or rental car facility. This actually reduces the demand on the main grid,” Krishnamoorthy explains, recalling a Texas friend whose at-home, solar-powered microgrid kept their lights on as other neighbors huddled in the dark around fireplaces during the state’s 2021 deep freeze.
The downsides of microgrids
Still, there are some downsides with microgrids, the AAAE report cautions—most notably, the complexity of deploying such a system, which is “essentially like building a small power plant.” Plus, microgrids typically require steep upfront investments (though federal grants can help offset the costs).
A DFW spokesperson tells Fast Company that it’s too early to put a price tag on its planned microgrid. But the long-term, potential cost savings of generating its own power is also part of what interests DFW leaders about the concept—particularly as the 20,000 or so rental cars on-site on any given day increasingly will run on electric power in the coming years.
“We want to get something that is going to benefit us long term,” Horton says. “We know that we need to have a resilient airport operation. We just want to make sure we do it in the right way, in a sustainable way, in a way that’s economically feasible as well.”
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