• The 6.63 megawatt (MW) solar PV array will consist of around 13,000 solar panels, covering six and half football fields, making it the largest array on any U.S. airport terminal.
• The solar array is part of a 12 MW microgrid featuring one of the first clustered microgrid architectures, which orchestrates four “power islands” strategically located around the terminal within a single smart, resilient energy system.
• Rooftop solar arrays on U.S. airports have been relatively rare given strict requirements for glare mitigation, making this project an important use case for future on-site renewables at U.S. airports.

New York, NY, September 24, 2024 — The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, The New Terminal One at JFK, and AlphaStruxure, a leader in Energy as a Service (EaaS) infrastructure solutions, today announced the start of construction of a microgrid at New Terminal One. It will feature the largest rooftop solar array in New York City and on any airport terminal in the United States. The array will consist of around 13,000 solar panels, covering roughly 370,000 square feet, or six and half football fields.

The microgrid’s construction launch, announced during Climate Week, is led by AlphaStruxure, the New Terminal One’s EaaS partner. The company is responsible for all design, construction, and operations while financing the project via an EaaS model. It will provide New Terminal One with sustainable, resilient, locally generated, and cost-predictable energy over a long-term contract.

As an all-international terminal, the New Terminal One is a key component of the Port Authority’s $19 billion transformation of JFK into a world-class global gateway that will include two new terminals with evocative public art and locally inspired retail options, two expanded and modernized terminals and an entirely new, efficient roadway network when complete.

The 12-megawatt microgrid will include 6.63 megawatts of rooftop solar, 3.84 megawatts of fuel cells, and 1.5 megawatts / 3.34 megawatt-hours of battery energy storage. It will also recover heat from the fuel cells to generate chilled water and hot water for the terminal. These clean energy technologies will avoid emitting particulate air pollutants, protecting clean air for the airport’s surrounding communities. It will also elevate resilience, with enough capacity to assist in powering the terminal and maintaining all operations in the event of a grid outage. The microgrid will generate the equivalent of 2,386 average U.S. homes’ annual electricity use. The clean energy technology aligns with the Port Authority’s aggressive sustainability goals, which include reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2040.

“As we get closer to the first gates opening at Kennedy Airport’s New Terminal One in 2026, we are pleased to move forward with plans for the terminal’s operations, particularly through our industry-leading approach to generate on-site power for the terminal,” said Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton. “We are committed to greener operations at our facilities, and this solar microgrid is a unique and innovative solution to the impact of climate change on our facilities and the region.”

“This construction milestone in our redevelopment of John F. Kennedy International Airport represents more than progress at one of our facilities because its success will set an industry example for others seeking to do better both for the environment and for customers,” said Port Authority Chairman Kevin O’Toole. “On-site green energy development such as the microgrid will improve resilience of the New Terminal One while also providing more reliable service for the terminal’s airline passengers if the region suffers from a network failure.”

“Breaking ground on this first-of-its-kind microgrid solution is a major and exciting milestone in New Terminal One’s commitment to reducing our carbon footprint and setting a new industry standard on sustainability,” said Jennifer Aument, CEO of New Terminal One. “This resilient and efficient energy solution will simultaneously enable us to decarbonize, drive innovation, and deliver lasting benefits to both our passengers and our community.”

“When it comes to energy, airports are facing a perfect storm: More passengers, more electrification, more outages, and more power capacity bumping up against aging energy infrastructure that’s less and less able to keep up,” said Juan Macias, CEO of AlphaStruxure. “The New Terminal One is building sustainable energy infrastructure at the speed and scale necessary to stay ahead of these challenges. We’re thrilled to provide an integrated microgrid solution via Energy as a Service that not only provides resilience for New Terminal One passengers, but advances the city, state, Port Authority’s and New Terminal One’s goals for carbon emission reduction.”

This project required solving technical challenges related to mitigating glare from the solar panels in order to meet Federal Aviation Administration safety regulations. Glare studies were conducted to ensure that sunlight reflecting off the panels does not impact aircraft pilot or air traffic controller visibility. The New Terminal One’s architecturally striking roof, featuring multiple angles and surfaces, further increased the glare study complexity. AlphaStruxure, New Terminal One and all partners collaborated to ensure all solar panels across the multi-pitch roof met safety requirements.

Overall, airports are faced with few options for generating green energy on-site as wind turbines are infeasible and historically, many airports avoided solar arrays due to challenges with glare. The New Terminal One microgrid demonstrates that large-scale rooftop solar is indeed a viable solution for on-site zero-carbon power generation at airports­.

Producing sustainable energy on-site with a microgrid­ offers resilience and helps airports to avoid outages. These outages can cost airports tens of millions of dollars while causing serious delays for passengers. The New Terminal One microgrid is especially resilient due to its novel “clustered” architecture, consisting of four separate “power islands.” Each power island functions as a hyper-localized, self-sufficient energy system with sources of generation, storage, and advanced automation and control. When one island is taken down for routine maintenance, the other three can remain online.

By dispersing a large microgrid into four clustered islands throughout the terminal, New Terminal One can generate energy sources as close as possible to where energy is consumed, thus minimizing power distribution complexity while making best use of limited space. Other airports with site constraints and busy tarmacs could leverage this clustered design to add new, much-needed sustainable energy capacity in a scalable way, without ripping up runways to trench in new utility feeds.

“With this quartet of microgrids orchestrated as a single smart system, New Terminal One will soon be home to one of the most advanced microgrids this country has ever seen,” Macias said.

“Sustainable microgrids are a perfect solution for airports as they simultaneously solve several challenges at once, particularly energy demand, resilience, and decarbonization,” said Aamir Paul, President of North America Operations at Schneider Electric. “The New Terminal One project at JFK shows that Schneider Electric’s microgrid technology is ready to transform our nation’s most critical infrastructure — including one of the busiest airports in the country — into a sustainable airport of the future.”

The microgrid will be delivered to New Terminal One stakeholders by AlphaStruxure, a leading Energy as a Service provider that will finance, design, build, own, operate, and maintain the New Terminal One microgrid. AlphaStruxure is financing the microgrid project through an EaaS model, which is a long-term agreement ensuring predictable operating costs and guaranteed performance without upfront capital expenditures to the Port Authority. Construction of the microgrid will support almost 100 local jobs, through AlphaStruxure, its design-builder partner E-J Electric Installation Co, and other project partners. Headquartered in Queens, E-J Electric will source all labor through local unions affiliated with the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. Additional project partners include Schneider Electric, delivering leading microgrid technology, controls, software, and services; Burns, serving as owner’s engineer on the project; Vanderweil Engineers as the engineer of record; BOND Civil & Utility Construction as the mechanical contractor; and HyAxiom, a Doosan company, as the provider of fuel cells and their maintenance.

It’s not just the New Terminal One that’s securing sustainability, resilience, and cost-predictability with an Energy as a Service microgrid.

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