Building Automation for Energy Resilience at Fort Benning

Honeywell has been selected by the U.S. Army to integrate advanced building automation technologies at Fort Benning, one of the largest military installations in the United States. The project focuses on energy management, infrastructure resilience, and operational efficiency across a large and diverse building portfolio, supporting mission readiness while reducing energy waste.

Energy modernization in a military infrastructure context
Large military bases function as small cities, with continuous energy demand across training, housing, logistics, and administrative facilities. Improving energy efficiency and resilience at this scale is critical not only for cost control, but also for operational continuity during grid disturbances or extreme weather events.

At Fort Benning, Honeywell’s work builds on earlier modernization efforts initiated in 2019 and expands them with additional automation and control upgrades. The new phase of the project is projected to deliver an additional $1.8 million in annual savings, bringing total expected energy cost reductions to nearly $4.5 million per year over a 15-year period.

Scope of the automation upgrade
The modernization program encompasses multiple layers of building energy management. Key elements include upgrades to LED lighting systems paired with advanced lighting controls, deployment of new occupancy sensors to better align energy use with actual building utilization, and updates to building control systems to improve monitoring and responsiveness.

The project also includes power conditioning solutions designed to provide stable, balanced voltage. This is particularly relevant in environments with sensitive equipment and high variability in load profiles, where voltage instability can reduce equipment life and increase maintenance requirements.

Centralized control and diagnostics with Niagara
Honeywell’s Niagara building control platform will serve as the backbone of the deployment. The platform will connect and manage building systems across more than 3 million square feet of indoor space and nearly 300 buildings on the base.

By providing a single interface for information sharing, system diagnostics, and performance monitoring, the platform enables facility managers to identify inefficiencies, detect faults early, and coordinate energy-saving strategies across the installation. This centralized approach supports both day-to-day operational efficiency and longer-term infrastructure planning.

Measurable benefits and operational implications
The projected savings are driven by reduced electricity consumption, lower peak demand, and improved system reliability. Occupancy-based controls and lighting upgrades directly reduce wasted energy, while enhanced automation and diagnostics help prevent failures that can lead to downtime or costly repairs.

For Fort Benning, these improvements contribute to greater energy resilience, ensuring that critical facilities remain operational under a wider range of conditions. From a broader perspective, the project reflects how building automation and digital control platforms are being applied within defense infrastructure to align cost efficiency with mission-critical requirements.

Broader relevance for public-sector facilities
While the project is specific to a military installation, the underlying approach—integrating lighting, controls, sensing, and power quality into a unified automation framework—mirrors trends across public-sector campuses such as universities, hospitals, and government complexes. The Fort Benning deployment illustrates how large, distributed building portfolios can use building automation systems to achieve quantifiable energy savings while improving operational robustness.