Making Wind Work for Alaska: Supporting the Development of Sustainable, Resilient, Cost-Effective Wind-Diesel Systems for Isolated Communities

Alaska Energy Data Gateway (Ginny Fay and Ben Saylor, ISER, UAA)

► Provide comprehensive information on Alaska energy accessible via the web to facilitate research, development and innovation

► Provide a high-value service and information to foster cooperation and teamwork across academics, research laboratories, public agencies, communities, utilities and industry developers

Project Overview

► Increase trust among players by increasing transparency on performance & economics of Alaska wind and other renewable energy systems

► Provide a foundation for current and future analyses

Project Overview

Address Critical Data Needs ► First systematic and comprehensive effort to manage

and make readily accessible Alaska energy data ► Facilitates quantitative and qualitative research and

systems analysis ► Energy data network bridges multiple needs ► Data management and accessibility critical for

communities, researchers agencies, project developers

Support Alaska Innovation ► Innovative synergy between engineering,

economic, cultural and social research on hybrid RE systems in rural, non-grid connected communities

► Identification of social capital to increase benefits and sustainability of systems

► Alaska’s conditions of off-grid, culturally diverse, remote rural communities is unique in the U.S. but relevant to numerous other locations cross the globe

Data Stewardship technical data management

Data Collection

Quality Assurance

Common format

conversion

Data Analysis

Data Storage

Data Service

Key Participants ► U.S. Department of Energy, EPSCoR ► National Renewable Energy ► Alaska Energy Authority—inclusion of Renewable

Energy Fund data for legislative reporting ► Chaninik Wind Group—explore four village coop to

increase local training and employment opportunities.

Key Participants ► Denali Commission—funded CWG project ► Alaska rural communities and utilities ► Alaska wind developers ► Renewable Energy Alaska Project ► Alaska Center for Energy and Power, Wind-Diesel

Application Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks ► UAA School of Engineering, UAF Institute of

Northern Engineering ► Institute of Social and Economic Research, University

of Alaska Anchorage

Methodology/Technical Approach ► Inventory and integrate several existing data sets ► Identify critical data gaps and needs ► Construct relational database linking datasets from

various data sources ► Develop web accessible information portal ► Goal is to make information widely available in

accessible, well-organized, well-documented form

► Hosted by Arctic Region Supercomputing Center

► Relational database adhering to standard design principles

► Based on Django and PostgreSQL

Technology

► Secure authentication ► Database table-level permissions ► Find, create, and edit data ► Detailed documentation and diagrams ► Data import ► Data download ► Report generation

Administrative Backend

► In development ► Makes data easy to find, download, and use ► Datasets are categorized and searchable ► Datasets have detailed descriptions and clear

variable definitions

Public Front End

► Incorporate more existing datasets ► Further develop RE Fund data capabilities

► Direct online reporting by operators ► Data sharing agreements ► Streamline and automate data updates ► High-resolution data collection

► Collaborate with ACEP

Future Work