Short Circuits: Optimizing microgrids for Alaska.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra

Kwethluk, a Yup'ik community of 812 residents about 12 miles east of Bethel, has some of the highest energy costs in Alaska. The village on the Kwethluk River in the Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta is only accessible by boat or plane.

"The YK Delta pays 40 percent more than the national average for energy," says Sean Glasheen, executive director of Nuvista Light and Electric Cooperative. "Almost all utilities here run and are powered by diesel... The YK needs to integrate some type of alternative energy to survive, but it needs to do it in a way that's sustainable."

When planning that alternative, Glasheen says the first thing he asked himself was, "Can we build a meaningful system that will lower the cost of energy in a significant way for the utility and the people of Kwethluk?"

The solution that Nuvista hit upon is harnessing the abundant wind that blows across the delta.

Four wind turbines, each higher than 150 feet tall, will replace 50,000 gallons of diesel fuel and are expected to last twenty to twenty-five years. Kwethluk's new wind turbines will power half of the community's electricity needs, as well as burning 50 percent less diesel and reduce residents' electric bills by up to half.

Nuvista has been planning since 2016, when the Calista Energy Management Assistance Initiative was created with a grant from the US Department of Energy's Office of Indian Energy. The initiative had to take a hard look at the grid as it is.

"Western Alaska local utilities are barebones with limited resources; most of the time they are struggling to run and poorly maintained," says Glasheen. "Engineering a new system to come in and overlay/work together can be very challenging and almost always requires a significant update or replacement to the base original equipment. The design of the new system also needs to be simple enough that the local operators can understand and operate or troubleshoot the system."

Wind turbines have been spinning for years in Bethel, downriver from Kwethluk. On the coast, ocean breezes power Hooper Bay, Toksook Bay, Mekoryuk, Kwigillingok, and Kongiganak. And Nuvista is moving ahead with more alternative energy projects in YK Delta villages.

"We are currently working six different communities in the YK Delta to engineering renewable energy systems," Glasheen says, "These systems will be a mix of solar/wind paired with a battery storage device."

Microgrids Rule

Blades for the new turbines arrived in Kwethluk in 2021, and they've...