Are Alaska's Energy Riches Blowing in the Wind?

Are Alaska's Energy Riches Blowing in the Wind?

Barbara Maynard* - IPS/IFEJ

ST. LOUIS, Missouri, Nov 7 (IPS) - Eight hundred kilometres west of Anchorage, on the coast of Kangirlvar Bay off the Bering Sea, sits the Yup'ik Eskimo community of Toksook Bay.
One hundred and ten homes, a school and an airstrip are clustered in this coastal village. Residents make their living by commercial fishing, working for the school and local government, and subsistence hunting.

The skyline is relatively flat around Toksook Bay, but recently some new features rose above the tundra. In 2006, three 100-kW wind turbines, each 32 metres tall, started providing power to this community of 600 people.

Today, over 20 percent of Toksook Bay's electricity comes from the wind, according to Brent Petrie, key accounts manager with Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC), which owns and operates the project.

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Alaska has tried before to tap the wind. In the early 1980s, when the state was awash in oil money, over 140 wind projects sprung up across the state, but little power was generated, thanks to poor planning and immature technology. Reeve cited one example of a turbine destined for Kotzebue that was never erected because the foundation was installed next to an airstrip.

Today, better-organised projects are demonstrating that the power of Alaska's strong and steady coastal winds can be economically tapped. Reeve has been installing wind turbines, a few at a time, outside of Kotzebue since 1997. Including this year's installation of three new turbines, the KEA wind farm now hosts 17 turbines, the largest such facility in the state.

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The idea, for now, is not to replace diesel systems, but to supplement them. By integrating wind and diesel, the systems allow the turbines to generate power when the wind is blowing; the diesel generators take over when the wind is still.

"There are months in St. Paul when the diesels don't come on," said Ian Baring-Gould, a senior engineer with the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He said the technology exists for wind to meet 60 to 70 percent of the power needs for communities with a good wind resource.

A handful of other western Alaskan communities have also incorporated wind turbines into their power plants with varying success. A project in Wales, a community of 140 people southwest of Kotzebue, was troublesome because the turbines were retrofitted onto an existing diesel system. Both Reeve and Baring-Gould agreed that the turbines have operated well, but integration with the old diesel caused problems.

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"It's an exciting time, especially in Alaska," Baring-Gould said. "It is cost-effective, we know that. Technically, it is feasible and it's being done. Now it's more of a policy question of what they want to do as a state, and what we want to do as a nation."