Redefining resilience for defense contractors with onsite energy

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.

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 centers

Data 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.