Redefining resilience with onsite energy
Hanson provides independent, third-party commissioning services with a proactive approach at every phase of a project. Since our first commissioning project in the 1980s, we have continually refined our processes to focus on delivering quality solutions while acting as your advocate. We provide energy and energy management services via various pathways that can focus on energy consumption, resiliency or the carbon footprint of the facility. These range from simple energy audits through energy management plans.
Our commissioning and energy team members have diverse backgrounds in design, construction and building operations, bringing a well-rounded perspective on behalf of the owner — from pre-design to construction, occupancy and beyond. The team’s technical abilities have helped build Hanson’s reputation for executing commissioning and energy projects on high-tech facilities, such as airports, laboratories and research facilities, health-care facilities, data centers, central energy plants and a variety of renewable energy systems. With the ever-increasing complexity in building systems affected by the reduced construction-phase length, our experience helps you attain your desired healthy indoor environmental quality while you achieve reduced energy consumption. Our team provides several commissioning levels tactical code-required, sustainable certification-required, including fundamental and enhanced.
- Onsite energy for defense contractors
In the world of mission-critical operations, particularly in data infrastructure to defense, organizations don’t lose money when the power goes out — they lose capability. Yet, most facilities still depend on a centralized grid that was not designed to guarantee continuous operation under prolonged or extreme disruption.
The shift is less about technology and more about how energy risk is evaluated. Increasingly, organizations are turning to on-site generation and energy storage to not just meet sustainability goals, but to ensure operational continuity, cost stability and reduced exposure to vulnerable systems.
Hanson provided Shackelford General Contractors, LLC, with project management and civil and structural engineering services for the design and construction of a battery yard energy storage system site in New Jersey. Resilience is the real driver
Energy resilience has moved to the forefront, because the risk landscape has changed. Grid outages are becoming more frequent due to aging infrastructure, increased electrification and extreme weather, while cyber and physical threats to centralized systems continue to grow.
Federal priorities reflect this shift. The U.S. Department of Defense continues to emphasize mission assurance and installation resilience, while the U.S. Department of Energy prioritizes grid reliability and energy security.
What’s notable is that this focus transcends political cycles. Regardless of how energy policy is framed, the underlying requirement remains the same: Critical operations must continue, even when the grid cannot.
On-site energy solves a specific problem
On-site energy systems — typically combining renewable generation, battery storage and intelligent controls — are being deployed as a direct response to these risks.
These systems enable facilities to:
- operate during grid outages through islanding
- reduce dependence on fuel delivery chains that are vulnerable during disruption
- stabilize energy costs through predictable generation
For defense contractors, the value is straightforward: greater control over energy supply translates into greater control over operations.
Miramar gets the details right
At Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, a microgrid expansion shows how resilience can be engineered into constrained sites. Approximately 6 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaic panels installed on a capped landfill (land that would otherwise remain unusable) are integrated with roughly 3 MW/6 megawatt-hours of battery storage and advanced controls.
The system has been tested for islanded operation, allowing the base to sustain critical missions during grid disruptions. Miramar has also deployed landfill gas-to-energy systems, reflecting a broader strategy of turning unconventional assets into operational infrastructure. The system is designed to sustain operations during grid failure, not just offset energy use during normal conditions.
Modeled resilience
There’s a tendency to treat resilience as binary: either you have backup power or you don’t. In reality, resilience exists on a spectrum defined by duration, load coverage and system performance under specific conditions.
Work led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has helped formalize this approach. Using tools such as the Renewable Energy Optimization (REopt) planning platform, installations can model:
- how long they can operate off-grid
- which mission-critical loads are prioritized
- how systems perform across different outage scenarios
This leads to a more useful question: What level of outage are you designing to withstand?
The answer is rarely “indefinitely.” Designing as if it is often results in unnecessary cost. Instead, resilience becomes an optimization problem — balancing investment against a clearly defined performance target tied to mission assurance.
That is where engineering judgment matters and where many facilities still have gaps.
Follow the data centersData centers offer a useful comparison. Designed for near-zero downtime, they have historically prioritized redundancy and isolation from the grid, an approach that continues to evolve.
Leading operators such as Google are piloting “carbon-aware” computing strategies that shift noncritical workloads in time or location to take advantage of cleaner or lower-cost energy. At the same time, companies like Microsoft are exploring how on-site battery systems, originally deployed for backup, can reduce peak demand or support grid stability when conditions allow.
These efforts don’t compromise uptime. Instead, they reveal something more nuanced: Even in highly constrained environments, there is value in identifying targeted flexibility.
For defense contractors, the implication is not that operations should become flexible, but that energy systems can be designed to provide resilience and greater control over how and when energy is used.
From business case to design requirement
While sustainability initiatives helped accelerate the early adoption of on-site energy, the business case has shifted. Today, these systems are driven by risk mitigation, cost predictability and operational continuity. Energy price volatility and supply chain dependencies have made costs harder to manage, while the assumption of constant grid availability is becoming less reliable. These pressures are pushing energy decisions into core infrastructure planning.
That shift changes how systems are designed.
The traditional model — grid supply supplemented by backup generators — was built on the assumption that outages would be infrequent and short. The key question is no longer whether a facility has backup power, but how it performs when the grid is unavailable — for hours or days.
On-site generation, storage and controls are being deployed to reduce exposure and improve operational control. For defense contractors, this represents a meaningful shift. Energy systems are no longer evaluated solely by efficiency or cost, but by their ability to support operations under failure.
- Existing-building and monitoring-based commissioning services
Existing-building commissioning
Hanson provides existing building commissioning that includes recommissioning and retro-commissioning services for existing facilities. This process can fine-tune your facility to improve operational efficiencies. With a focus on low- and no-cost facility improvement measures and resiliency, the process also includes capital expenditure projects and those that are not feasible today but could be as the technology improves. Our EBCx process can build on an energy or carbon audit or a facility condition assessment.
The University of Florida’s Malachowsky Hall for Data Science and Information Technology houses the university’s engineering, healthcare and bioinformatics programs. Monitoring-based commissioning
Monitoring-based commissioning is your facility’s intersection with data analytics, real-world engineering experience and system optimization. MBCx gives perspective on how a building is truly operating, versus how the designer expected it to operate, by allowing building owners to comprehensively evaluate their building and identify how one system’s operational issues may be caused by the inefficient operations of supporting systems. Hanson’s team can help you navigate the use of MBCx. As buildings become more automated, the MBCx process helps the owner sustain or increase the intended energy savings of the original systems and increase resiliency.
With our system-agnostic software, along with years of design and field experience, we target your building’s problem areas, allowing facility staff to be proactive instead of reactive.
- Energy management
Managing your facility’s energy consumption is critical to achieving a healthy and comfortable building that consumes the right amount of energy. Our team has the experience to help you identify opportunities to achieve your goals.
For instance, many airport energy managers find that the most important metrics relate to energy consumption and demand. Energy baselines should be developed for their airport facilities, if they have not already been established. Hanson’s team has been assisting the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority with developing a multiphase energy management plan (EMP) that will help it establish a roadmap for building a sustainable energy program at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The EMP pinpoints existing and future energy needs, reveals how the authority can address its electrical utility challenges and improve the reliability of its systems, identifies energy saving measures and alternative energy sources to reduce energy usage and costs in support of the airport’s future growth and sustainability program and develops an approach to track, audit, assess and report on energy and sustainability performance. Learn what two of our thought leaders say about airport energy metrics.
Our comprehensive services include:
- energy and carbon audits: identifying facility improvements to reduce their carbon or energy consumption through data-driven information
- energy and carbon roadmaps and management plans: helping clients plan their pathway to achieving their sustainability goals
- analytics platform implementation: developing and implementing a data acquisition and analytics platform to evaluate and improve system performance
- Healthcare commissioning
Hanson has extensive experience commissioning healthcare facilities across the country, with projects spanning from Florida to the Midwest. Our work routinely includes mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems; comprehensive training for facility staff; equipment tagging for integration into computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS); and development of detailed systems manuals to ensure staff fully understand system operations.- Energy and carbon audits
As energy costs continue to rise and the need to monitor your carbon footprint increases, our team has the experience needed to identify opportunities for making your existing buildings more efficient through audits.
We perform evaluations from benchmarking to investment-grade evaluations using the process outlined by ASHRAE Standard 211: Standard for Commercial Building Energy Audits. Our goal is to provide potential facility improvement measures that range from no or low cost to planned capital expenditure projects.
Hanson provided an energy roadmap for JFK International Airport Terminal 4 in Jamaica, Queens, New York. - Renewable energy and battery storage
Solar energy
We bring decades of engineering excellence to the forefront of solar energy. Our interdisciplinary team delivers custom solar solutions that meet the evolving needs of our utility clients. From concept to commissioning, we help you harness the sun to power the future.
Hanson has completed projects in over 40 countries and in all 50 states in the U.S. With a combination of seasoned experience and a local presence from one of our 28 office locations, Hanson is ready to support you. Our contractor-friendly plans help reduce site development costs and streamline construction for large-scale solar installations. As a charter member of the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure, Hanson prioritizes eco-conscious engineering. We facilitate stakeholder engagement, manage permitting processes and provide expert witness services for smooth approvals and community support. Learn more about our solar energy services.
Wind energy
We also know the compliance requirements of the federal, state and local laws, regulations and ordinances that are necessary for the required approvals and completion of energy projects. Contractor-friendly plans are also one of our goals to keep your site-development costs in check — which helps your bottom line. We support your wind energy projects with multiple services.
Battery energy storage systems
Hanson understands the complexities of battery energy storage system (BESS) projects and the federal, state and local laws, regulations and ordinances impacting them. We are experienced in working with the regulatory bodies, our clients and stakeholders to attain the approvals your energy project needs. Read more about our BESS services.