Solar panels in Alaska

From CleanTechnica:

File this one under W for When You’ve Lost Alaska, You’ve Lost. The great oil-producing state of Alaska is beginning to deploy solar panels to reduce the use of diesel fuel for electricity generation and reduce sky-high electricity bills in remote rural villages — and yes, the solar panels work just fine in cold, snowy weather.

Also did you know that Alaska has solar resources comparable to Germany? 

The new project is located in the Native Village of Hughes [66° N] and is being partially funded by the Energy Department. In its blog, the DOE noted that Hughes currently consumes 40,000 gallons of diesel for power generation every year.

The diesel situation is really messing with the local economy:

…The Village powerhouse generates 100% of the electricity it produces from diesel flown in on Korean War-era planes. And because Hughes lacks sufficient fuel storage to make fuel delivery by barge cost effective, residents who use over 500 kWh per month pay more than $0.70/kWh—nearly four times the state average.

Yikes! Those are Douglas DC-6 planes, to be exact. The last one rolled off the assembly line in 1958, so you do the math.

Where were we? Oh right, the solar panels. The size of the new installation is smallish, at 120 kilowatts, but everything is relative. When completed, it will be the largest solar installation in Alaska to date.

The new solar panels will be part of a solar-diesel microgrid that includes energy storage. Once up and running later this spring, the microgrid will reduce the village’s dependency on diesel by about 25% and save about $1 million in electricity costs over the next 20 years.

[There's a lot more about the project in the original article]

Some observations:

• Solar works even this far north!
• It's extremely cost effective because diesel-powered electricity is so expensive.  The same situation applies in many "island grids", for example, Hawaii.  But as renewable costs decline it will be true everywhere that renewables are materially cheaper than fossil fuels.
• Although a small wind turbine suitable for such a small community would not be nearly as efficient as the new behemoths now being built around the world now, its electricity would likely still be cheaper than diesel.  Adding wind to the mix would reduce diesel demands in winter and make the renewable generation less variable on average.