**Title**: Energy in the North - Lydia Andriesen
**Date**: September 11, 2024
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Lydia Andriesen

00;00;00;28 - 00;00;02;23 [Lydia Andriesen] Not all of us are engineers. So you think about energy and you're like, that's an engineering problem. But no, it's an everyone problem.

00;00;08;20 - 00;00;12;01 [Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, we speak with Lydia Andriesen. A summer intern in the ten week National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Lydia is from Haines, is in her junior year and is a climate scholar at UAF. I started by asking her why she decided to attend the UAF.

00;00;29;01 - 00;00;40;10 [Lydia Andriesen] Well, the I think the common answer for a lot of Alaskans is scholarships. But that Climate Scholars program was a big thing for me because I'm a mechanical engineering major. But the real reason I'm in it is for climate. There's a program at UAF through the Honors program, it focuses your entire degree here on climate change. So instead of just getting an environmental change degree, you can have your own degree, any discipline and oriented towards climate.

00;00;59;07 - 00;01;02;13 [Amanda Byrd] And you just spent your summer working with ACEP researchers.

00;01;02;13 - 00;01;17;09 [[Lydia Andriesen] I have had several friends who've done the ACEP internship program and they've just come away with such a well-rounded and great experience. Not only are you doing research, but you're doing all of these other things that ACEP does. I also just love the mission that ACEP has; they're not just going into these communities to gain capital or anything. It's like we want to help communities in Alaska and make make lives better, make their energy bills drop.

00;01;33;16 - 00;01;35;20 [Amanda Byrd] And your work has been pretty varied and active.

00;01;35;21 - 00;01;58;26 [Lydia Andriesen] I'm working with Eloise Brown and Steph Fisher with hydrokinetic research. So with Steph, I'm in the field twice a week and just helping out with anything I can, whether it's learning how to weld, which has been super cool or helping with testing a turbine that the federal labs bring here every year. And then with El, I'm doing some coding. So she has a lot of data from Kotzebue and looking at the tidal resources there. So coding and data analysis for seeing what kind of resource they have as well as other communities like McGrath, They're looking at getting river energy. It's not like actually putting river energy in, It's like what is the resource availability.

00;02;25;19 - 00;02;29;12 [Amanda Byrd] Did you get to go out into the field for some of that research?

00;02;29;13 - 00;02;34;14 [Lydia Andriesen] Over 4th of July, I was in Kotzebue and we were there actually deploying some equipment for measuring tidal resource.

00;02;36;20 - 00;02;37;18 [Amanda Byrd] What was that like?

00;02;37;18 - 00;02;48;11 [Lydia Andriesen] The first few weeks of my internship, I was learning how to deploy this stuff, like setting up the software for the equipment, and then we actually got to do it. So that was awesome. Then got to get on a boat.

00;02;48;11 - 00;02;50;10 [Amanda Byrd] What was most surprising about your work?

00;02;50;10 - 00;02;52;05 [Lydia Andriesen] Not all of us are engineers. So you think about energy and you're like, that's an engineering problem. But no, it's an everyone problem. So I've really enjoyed talking to my fellow interns about their projects because the humanities side is just as important as the engineering side. There tackling problems that need to be solved while the technological problems are needed to be solved.

00;03;14;02 - 00;03;19;21 [Amanda Byrd] You've lived abroad and you've been doing really cool work. Do you think you'll stay here in Alaska?

00;03;19;21 - 00;03;20;09 [Lydia Andriesen] Since being here more as an in an adult capacity, I've realized this is like my home. I studied abroad in Madrid last year and definitely realized city life is not for me. So there's just an unmatched access to nature and their respect for it here.

00;03;40;04 - 00;03;50;09 [Amanda Byrd] Lydia Andriesen is an undergraduate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. 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.