emote power comes at a high cost. As a June 2025 funding announcement from the US Department of Energy put it, “Americans living in remote reaches of the country pay some of the highest prices for electricity, yet their service is often below modern standards.”

Nick Lochard, owner and operator of Wasilla-based solar equipment supplier All Off Grid, says one of his clients had been paying almost $50 per gallon for fuel when he did a retrofit on the location, which was only accessible by helicopter. Even slightly more accessible but still diesel-dependent communities can sometimes pay $1 per kilowatt hour (kWh)—several times what urban communities pay.

To put that in context, the power required to run a load of laundry would cost more than $5 at $0.56 per kWh, according to Brian Hirsch, co-owner and CEO of Deerstone Consulting in Anchorage. At $1 per kWh, the same load would cost almost $9 just for electricity, never mind costs for water use and treatment.

Off-grid energy suppliers and renewable energy consultants are working to improve efficiency and resilience for Alaska’s remote communities and work sites. “There’s a great opportunity to reduce the dependence on diesel fuels, fossil fuels,” says Jacob Pomeranz, vice president of Electric Power Systems (EPS) in Anchorage. Battery storage and wind turbine technologies have evolved while installation and operation costs have come down.

However, many technologies need adaptation to work in the Alaska context. And at the same time, the federal government’s willingness to provide funding for renewable projects has shifted. Greg Porter—the founder, president, and CEO of Arctic Energy, a distributor of Capstone microturbines in Anchorage, says, “There’s no silver bullet… but there sure is a lot of silver buckshot.”

Heavy reliance on diesel that comes by barge or plane brings certain vulnerabilities. In 2007, bad weather delayed some fuel deliveries for at least three months, imperiling the residents of St. George in the Pribilof Islands. Air-delivered diesel also depends on good weather and consistent flying schedules. In 2025, both Ravn Alaska and Kenai Aviation shut down, reducing many villages’ already-limited air service.

These stakes helped drive Alaska to a leading role in alternative energy use. According to the US Department of Energy, Alaska has “more than 200 remote microgrids—the most in the United States.” Data compiled by Alaska Energy Authority (AEA) show increased adoption of renewable energy sources: while 151 communities only use diesel for power, 46 use diesel in combination with at least one renewable source.

All told, AEA shows 118 projects operating thanks to grants and loans from its Renewable Energy Fund, with another 49 in development. Some of these projects connect to existing power grids, but many do not. Of the 14 communities AEA shows using more than one type of renewable energy—i.e., diesel alongside a combination of solar, hydro, wind, and/or biomass—only two are on the road system.

Porter, Pomeranz, Lochard, and others agree that Alaska has many opportunities to use alternative energy sources. At the same time, the state faces challenges ranging from upfront costs and the limits of existing infrastructure to the unknowns of federal funding and whether a manufacturer will stay in business, so vendors devise creative solutions. “We’ve all been part of these projects where the technology came in… but when we put it in Alaska, we… had to tweak them,” Porter says.

Whether it’s the need to account for arctic engineering or lower-than-urban power needs, few things just work out of the box. “You can’t just cookie cutter the same projects into multiple villages,” says Pomeranz. Successful alternative energy projects require thoughtful study to fully understand the community or client’s needs, the surrounding environment, and all the system parts that need to work together.

One place that happens is the power systems integration laboratory (PSI Lab) at UAF. “We really have this depth of operational experience of what it takes to make power in rural Alaska” says Emilia Sakai Hernandez, the lab’s research project manager.

When companies or utilities come to the PSI Lab, they get an important chance to test equipment, pre-installation, on a setup similar to what many villages have, Hernandez says. For example, the lab has both a 500 kW and 125 kW diesel generator.

The lab is also unique in both being on the road system and offering a test environment that’s “electrically isolated” from the grid the university’s on. Hernandez says that’s important because many microgrid setups designed outside Alaska assume the ability to connect and disconnect from a larger grid. A hospital, for example, might want its own microgrid to sustain operations during a power blackout. But “in the villages, they’re always going to be islanded because of the geography,” Hernandez says. Village power systems might also have lower inertia than manufacturers expect.

In one case where the lab played a key role, a company tested a battery system that supposedly could connect to a local grid without a transformer. (The utility involved didn’t want a transformer.) But the battery maker had only tested its equipment on a grid connected to a larger power system. At the PSI Lab, “It blew a bunch of fuses because it had been expecting a grid that could regulate itself,” Hernandez says. “If that had happened when the battery went out to the village… it would have been catastrophic.”

The remoteness of projects can also affect the timeline for planning and implementation. At Susitna Energy Solutions in Anchorage, co-owners Andrea and Jordan Dubron like to have enough lead time to leverage seasonal barges. “If we’re able to… get [project supplies or equipment] on a barge, we’re able to cut the price down… by hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Jordan says. “If somebody gives us a year to work on a project with them… that can be a difference of a $3 million project or a $6 million project.”

Whatever a project’s cost, installing durable systems is a priority. “We like to see a system like what we’re describing… have at least a twenty-five-year lifespan, at least,” Lochard says.

Arctic Energy guarantees its projects for twenty years. Porter says that’s because renewable energy companies “come and go about every five years.” The company whose microturbines he distributes (“specialized jet engine[s] that can burn pretty much anything” and use air-lubricated bearings) has a decades-long track record, but that’s not always the case.

For example, the maker of some of the smallest wind turbines on the market—Dutch company Emergya Wind Technologies, whose small turbines help power Kotzebue and St. Mary’s—declared bankruptcy this past summer. To Hernandez, that leaves the future of such Alaska-sized turbines in question. “Sometimes companies will want to test things in Alaska,” says Hernandez. “But they will just build it as a one-off system, and they won’t actually make a commercial product that can be used by Alaskan villages. That’s a persistent problem.”

Whatever a product’s best-case lifespan, maximizing its “career” requires good maintenance. All the factors that make power expensive in such places, however, can likewise limit communities’ ability to handle upkeep. Because of that, Pomeranz says EPS does “very thorough” commissioning for their projects. “There’s a lot higher risk of causing damage, not being able to start the system, if you don’t understand what you’re affecting,” he says. “When you’re commissioning it… you need to run through every scenario that’s possible”—both intended and unplanned.

Reducing diesel-produced power has different effects on labor needs, depending on the context. In some villages, Pomeranz says adding alternative energy sources can lead to new jobs in the community. In village contexts, that’s a good thing. For example, Kotzebue Electric Association’s wind and solar systems have saved “well over 250,000 gallons of diesel fuel a year,” says Hirsch. “This effectively creates a part- or full-time job for maintenance and continuing to pursue more renewables.” He expects a Galena project that’s close to completion will also create a “full time equivalent job.” The Yukon River community, home to a former US military base, is installing a solar farm to supplement an existing wood-chip-fired boiler, and the village is studying hydrokinetic power.

On the other hand, Lochard says some of his projects reduce the use of diesel so much that it helps some clients reduce their maintenance workload. Achieving those savings can also require some counterintuitive changes. For one recent All Off Grid project near Trapper Creek, the site originally had a 5kW generator that powered the whole space. When he recommended a 13.5kW generator, the owner was taken aback, Lochard recalls: “‘Why would I want something that big?’”

The difference was that the new, larger generator would power the batteries, not the property load itself. “Now when their generator starts, it only runs 3.5 hours” and powers them for more than four days, he says. In another project across the Susitna River on Bald Mountain, he reduced the client’s fuel consumption by more than 80 percent while increasing the power available from one of two existing generators. Bringing in batteries, an inverter, and solar panels allowed them to do that. Now the generator only powers the inverter.

With more than 200 rural communities using microgrids and many individuals setting up their own off-grid systems, Alaska is on the forefront when it comes to testing and implementing alternative energy systems. But funding, implementing, and integrating the new systems with existing technology is a bit like tracking the wind many communities seek to harness. Sometimes it blows where and how one expects it to, other times it surprises. The key is to keep observing, testing, and learning, and, like many facets of living in Alaska: always be prepared to innovate.