**Title**: Energy in the North - Edwin Bifelt
**Date**: October 16, 2024
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Edwin Bifelt

00;00;01;02 - 00;00;02;10 [Edwin Bifelt] We try to focus a lot on local hire for our projects, and try to invest as much as we can into these communities.

00;00;07;17 - 00;00;15;19 [Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, we speak with Edwin Bifelt, the founder and CEO of Alaska Native Renewable Industries, or ANRI. In 2012, Edwin graduated from UAF with a master's in business administration, and in 2017 he saw a need for a local solar installer in rural Alaska. ANRI has installed solar arrays in remote communities like Kotzebue, Shungnak, and Hughes, and I started by asking how many people he employs.

00;00;33;15 - 00;00;48;29 [Edwin Bifelt] Full time probably varies in the range of 6 to 10 throughout the year. On individual construction projects, we'll have anywhere from 10 to 30 employees depending on project size and complexity.My living and growing up in Huslia, I think definitely had a big impact on, you know, my perspective and, you know, on the construction industry in general. My family has been in construction for  all my life. My dad was a carpenter, my late grandfather, Alfred Attla, he was a foreman, a kind of a project manager throughout the interior region. And, my grandfather Cue Bifelt, he was a river barge captain for decades. Growing up, a lot of contractors based on the Railbelt in Alaska would bring in a lot of their own construction crew and that kind of shaped how I wanted ANRI to operate. We try to focus a lot on local hire for our projects, and try to invest as much as we can into these communities. Budgets for these projects are in the range of millions of dollars. The economic benefits of that, We want to make sure that as much cash stays within the community, also.

00;01;38;28 - 00;01;41;16 [Amanda Byrd] And so you hire local people to install these systems and do you also train people to run the systems?

00;01;47;18 - 00;01;50;24 [Edwin Bifelt] Essentially, it's a lot of on the job training for the crews. We hire mostly laborers and do have operators we hire throughout our projects. We try to educate our crew members throughout the crew on what we're doing, you know, why we're doing it and kind of what's involved in it and kind of what the goals are of why we're installing these solar arrays. We've continued continuously tried to, you know, involve as much O & M training as we can. Also, before We did these projects, there weren't very many large scale solar projects within rural Alaska, not very many battery storage projects within rural us. So it's always kind of a, you know, learning experience as we go along.

00;02;24;20 - 00;02;37;05 [Amanda Byrd] Your team won an award for installing a 223 kiloWatt solar and battery system that allows the Shungnak and Kobuk microgrids to run diesels-off for an average of 8 to 10 hours a day in the summer months.

00;02;37;05 - 00;02;40;16 [Edwin Bifelt] Yeah. Shungnak was essentially our first project where we led all the major construction areas, you know, past projects. We had subcontracted out some foundation drilling this project. It was our first major battery storage project. So it combined all the components that go into a rural islanded microgrid solar battery storage project, tying into a diesel fired system. So we ended up winning a Solar Builder Microgrid Project of the Year for 2021. We won a DOE Sunny Award. One of the grand prizes. Yeah, it's a project we're definitely proud of. It also highlighted the importance of collaboration with multiple entities. I think the Northwest Arctic Borough did an outstanding job with that project and NANA Regional Corporation was involved and did great amount of work. And also the Native Village of Shungnak and the Native village of Kobuk. The award wasn't just a reflection of the construction work that we led. It was kind of a collaboration of okay, we, we had these multiple entities that came together, successfully did this project that hasn't really been done like this before.

00;03;46;03 - 00;04;00;17 [Amanda Byrd] Edwin Bifelt is the founder and CEO of Alaska Native Renewable Industries. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power at UAF. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.