atisfying the energy needs of Alaska’s rural communities requires a diverse set of solutions. Among them is adopting alternative forms of energy generation and using custom system designs to fit each community’s energy profile.
These systems are feats of engineering, built to sustain the demands of rugged terrain, unforgiving climates, and scarcity of personnel.
One of the primary features that must be taken into consideration when designing rural energy systems is robustness. Tim Sandstrom, director of rural programs at the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA), recalls one recent incident in Kongiganak, near the mouth of the Kuskokwim River on the state’s southwestern coast, in which a relatively new wind turbine was destroyed by extreme conditions.
“They couldn’t break the wind, and it broke,” he says. “Millions of dollars invested into that, and Mother Nature destroyed it.”
Matt Bergan, an engineer with the Kotzebue Electric Association (KEA), also cites Alaska’s extreme weather conditions as a consideration for rural energy design.
“The biggest environmental concern we have is snow drifting caused by the panels. We have to design them to minimize the number of snow drifts they produce,” he says, noting that solar panel arrays have to be raised off the ground as high as 2 to 3 feet.
Low temperatures can also make certain equipment brittle and cause it to crack, Bergan adds.
Edwin Bifelt, founder and CEO of energy contracting firm Alaska Native Renewable Industries (ANRI), says he keeps winter weather in mind when designing systems: “We account for snow loads and wind loads—we include that within our design.”
Bifelt says some of the measures his contracting firm takes include strengthening the racks that hold solar panels and increasing the anchoring force by using 6-foot helical anchors and 10-foot ground screws.
The ground itself can add a layer of difficulty to a project. “With permafrost covering a large portion of the Arctic, just drilling through that can be challenging.”
Bifelt started ANRI in 2017 and says there wasn’t much of an interest in solar photovoltaic (PV) in rural Alaska. But Bifelt feels things are beginning to change.
“I believe it’s increasing,” Bifelt says. “It’s tough to quantify, but I’d like to say we’re seeing more interest, more awareness about solar PV.”
ANRI completed a project in Hughes in 2019 that was the largest solar power system in rural Alaska, and in 2020 it installed a 576-kilowatt solar array for KEA, which holds the new record for the state’s largest solar energy system.
Bifelt says that a community’s ideal energy mix is often driven by its stakeholders. “A lot of times the customer will specify the size of the ideal system they’re looking for,” he says.
Yet ANRI is looking to take a more proactive approach, coming up with hypothetical scenarios for rural communities. “We’ll focus more on how we can design an array to handle the majority of the [electric] load in the spring, summer, and fall months. That’s the ideal goal,” Bifelt says.
The process begins with looking at a community’s entire power generation system, including details like how much fuel they’re using and what type of alternate energy could offset production from those generators. “When they’re not running as much, you extend the life of those generations and reduce your diesel fuel usage,” Bifelt says. “[But] solar PV isn’t going to offset all year.”
Sandstrom takes a similar stance.
“Anything north of Anchorage and solar is not going to work [with] three months of darkness,” he says, adding that wind energy is a viable option for the rainforests of southeastern Alaska.
“There’s also biomass, but north of Fairbanks you have no trees. It’s really a challenge in some of these communities for any type of renewable energy—or it’s expensive,” he adds.
However, Bifelt holds a brighter view for solar’s potential.
“We believe photovoltaic has a lot of advantages in rural Alaska where logistics are challenging,” he says, adding that communities benefit from projects that bring with them both alternative energy solutions and training for local residents, who comprise up to 90 percent of the company’s labor force on any given project.
Bifelt’s company is set to begin work next spring on a solar energy project in the Northwest Arctic villages of Shungnak and Kobuk.
Matt Bergan
Matt Bergan
Matt Bergan
Matt Bergan
“The way things are both with the world, the climate, and the economy, if we could do a lot more projects in rural Alaska, I think it would go a long way toward helping sustainability in Alaska,” Bifelt says. “The costs in rural Alaska are so high that if you take a look at it, it makes sense.”
Although the state’s Power Cost Equalization program provides some relief to rural energy customers, Bifelt notes that Alaska is seeing decreasing revenue from oil production, which is having an economic impact on every community.
Oil production from North Slope fields has been declining for thirty years, dropping to about 500,000 barrels a day from a high of 2 million barrels a day, a level that (at the time) accounted for one-fourth of US crude production.
Between sustained low oil prices and the drop in production, oil will provide 19 percent of the state’s revenue for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2021, the lowest figure since 1960, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Finance Division.
“It’s not a good financial picture for the state,” Bifelt says. “The sooner that communities’ utilities look at renewable sources, sustainable sources, the better off they’re going to be. In five years, it’s going to be a different picture. The world’s going to be a different place in ten years.”
In his January 2020 State of the State address, Governor Mike Dunleavy said his administration is planning “a lot more” action on renewable power and pushing the state to produce half of its electricity from alternative and renewable energy sources by 2025.
Renewables already accounted for about 30 percent of the state’s electricity generation in 2018, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
For Martin Shroyer, KEA general manager, the annual savings KEA sees from alternative energy production is between $225,000 and $300,000 per year. “It’s pretty good savings,” he says, adding that this past year also saw lower fuel prices.
Such cost reductions translate into real-world relief for the state’s rural households, which spend 27 percent of their annual income on home energy (compared to less than 7 percent in urban areas), according to Meera Kohler, president and CEO of the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative.
Matt Bergan
Matt Bergan
“The cost of solar has come down tremendously, which made it more appealing,” says Bergan, who began his career in the energy industry installing wind turbines, later adding photovoltaic systems to his repertoire.
Even though there isn’t enough sunlight to power solar panels for a third of the year in some parts of the state, the other two-thirds “matches up pretty well” with the needs of rural systems, he says.
According to Bergan, the cost of operating wind turbines is relatively high when expenses of manpower and parts necessary to keep the mechanical systems operating are considered. Solar panels, on the other hand, require little regular maintenance once they’re installed.
“There’s no moving parts,” he says. “You’re not getting as much energy production as wind, but our maintenance costs were a lot lower from solar.”
Shroyer says solar panels occasionally produce more power than customers use and in those cases KEA employs “beneficial electrification.” The utility, in effect, burns off the excess power by sending it to a heating device in a home or business, slightly reducing a customer’s heating bill.
“It could turn on daily… it could turn on for a second,” he says. “Over the years, they’re saving 30,000 to 40,000 gallons of diesel.”
AEA’s Sandstrom says that nearly 200 rural communities across Alaska employ diesel fuel generators as the primary means of producing power, with some systems supplementing with wind, hydro, and solar energy. The AEA itself owns five utilities that serve approximately 500,000 Alaskans and operates the Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Plant.
Matt Bergan
Matt Bergan
Sandstrom says the use of alternative energy received a boost about twelve years ago from the Denali Commission, an independent federal agency designed to provide critical utilities, infrastructure, and economic support throughout Alaska. That support primarily fueled an interest in wind turbines.
“That has waned somewhat,” he adds, citing maintenance issues and withering state and federal grants.
In its strategic plan for 2018-2022, the Denali Commission lists as one of its goals continued investment “in projects and initiatives that improve the affordability, safety and/or reliability of fuel storage, the production and storage of energy, electrical distribution systems, and heating the built environment in rural Alaska.”
Curtis Thayer, AEA’s executive director, says the largest drawback facing rural energy systems is a lack of funding for unmet needs, which would require a total of $800 million in bulk fuel storage upgrades and ongoing replacement for equipment that has exceeded its 20-year life cycle.
One potential solution is the recent adoption of 3D imaging to help circuit rider technicians remotely walk local utility workers through solving maintenance issues in a computerized virtual environment. That allows technical repairs or other work to be carried out when distance or weather conditions hinder timely assistance. “We are pioneering the use of 3D imaging in rural Alaska,” Thayer says.
The state’s overall financial outlook poses giant challenges to Alaska’s energy flexibility; as the state has slogged through several years of recession, many programs have seen huge reductions in funding. One of them is the Renewable Energy Fund, which provides grant funding for the development of selected renewable energy projects.
In past years, its annual funding levels reached as high as $50 million, compared with the current $2 million.
While nothing really makes up for having enough funding, Alaska’s energy advocates are still finding ways to support renewable energy development.
For example, Sandstrom says AEA is taking a two-pronged approach to address maintenance issues: it helps fund training programs provided by the Alaska Vocational Technical Center in Seward, and it operates the Circuit Rider program that makes energy technicians available to rural communities based on need.
These efforts replenish the knowledge—and reduce the costs—needed to maintain rural energy systems. Vocational training can help stymie the outward migration of young people from rural communities by providing local job opportunities, and a local skilled workforce reduces the costs of travel or housing that infrastructure maintenance might otherwise require. 