Arista Power, Inc. announced that it has received a contract valued at $625,000 from the U.S. Army to further develop an Intelligent Micro-Grid System in support of the U.S. Army Communications Electronics Research and Development Center's (CERDEC's) Command Power and Integration Renewable Energy for Distributed Under-Supplied Command Environments (REDUCE) program. The contract builds on Arista Power's successful Phase 1 and Phase 2 programs, for which Arista Power is the prime contractor. Under the next phase of the program, Arista Power will continue work towards the standardization of interfaces and development of an open communication protocol allowing a truly plug and play environment to be leveraged by military micro grids deployed in forward operating bases.

The contract calls for Arista Power to provide demonstrated capability of an advanced Energy Resource Manager and the ability to utilize multiple energy storage systems of various chemistries seamlessly within the same micro-grid system. Arista Power was selected as prime contractor to develop the U.S. Army's Intelligent Micro-Grid in January 2012, and received a Phase Two development contract to further develop the system in October 2012. A top priority for the U.S. Army is the availability of adequate power in remote locations to run all the equipment necessary to fight a war and maintain the quality of life for soldiers at these locations.

Because a majority of the power used at these locations is provided by diesel generators, the difficulty and expense of providing the fuel to run these generators at remote locations is a major concern for the U.S. Army.