(Tribune News Service) — Parts of Area B on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base will have no power for 12 hours Thursday as part of an exercise, the base said.

The outage will be part of an Energy Resilience Readiness Exercise. "The base Energy Management Office is pulling the plug beginning at midnight to test Area B's resilience during a widespread power-grid outage," the base said in a release.

Area B is home to the Air Force Institute of Technology, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center functions, as well as Air Force Research Lab and 711th Human Performance Wing offices and labs, among other units.

Some Area B facilities will be exempt from the exercise.

"The exercise will separate the installation from commercial power and test how well critical missions can perform utilizing backup power resources," Dustin Hoehn, 88th Civil Engineer Group energy manager, said in the base announcement. "It helps to determine critical energy requirements, validate continuity of operations plans and identify infrastructure interdependencies. Exercising these procedures during a planned event helps the base be better prepared for real world situations."

Wright-Patterson said it was one of six Air Force bases to conduct such an exercise last year.

The first event for the installation occurred on Area A and "allowed the base to capture data and discover vulnerabilities to be better prepared for a real-world power outage," the base said.

"We did identify numerous mission and infrastructure gaps through the planning and execution phases of the exercise. Items identified were related to backup generation, HVAC, access control, fire suppression and communications," Hoehn said.

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