Remote power systems with advanced storage technologies for Alaskan villages

Abstract

Remote Alaskan communities pay economic and environmental penalties for electricity, because they must import diesel as their primary fuel for electric power production, paying heavy transportation costs and potentially causing environmental damage with empty drums, leakage, and spills. For these reasons, remote villages offer a viable niche market where sustainable energy systems based on renewable resources and advanced energy storage technologies can compete favorably on purely economic grounds, while providing environmental benefits. These villages can also serve as a robust proving ground for systematic analysis, study, improvement, and optimization of sustainable energy systems with advanced technologies. This paper presents an analytical optimization of a remote power system for a hypothetical Alaskan village. The analysis considers the potential of generating renewable energy (e.g., wind and solar), along with the possibility of using energy storage to take full advantage of the intermittent renewable sources available to these villages. Storage in the form of either compressed hydrogen or zinc pellets can then provide electricity from hydrogen or zinc-air fuel cells when renewable sources are unavailable.The analytical results show a great potential to reduce fossil fuel consumption and costs basing renewable energy combined with advanced energy storage devices. The best solution for our hypothetical village appears to be a hybrid energy system, which can reduce consumption of diesel fuel by over 50% with annualized cost savings by over 30% by adding wind turbines to the existing diesel generators. When energy storage devices are added, diesel fuel consumption and costs can be reduced substantially more. With optimized energy storage, use of the diesel generatorss can be reduced to almost zero, with the existing equipment only maintained for added reliability. However about one quarter of the original diesel consumption is still used for heating purposes. (We use the term diesel to encompass the fuel, often called heating or fuel oil, of similar or identical properties.)