ACEP at Work: Yakutat Wave Assessment Project Update
Project Description:
Yakutat is a remote community located on the “Lost Coast” along the northeastern Gulf
of Alaska. Their current power generation is 100% from diesel fuel which must be barged
in, resulting in a high cost of electricity that averages $.60 per kilowatt hour.
The city and borough of Yakutat along with tribal leaders have been proactive in identifying
other options to meet their energy needs that are potentially less expensive and more
sustainable, including wave energy. Because the majority of wave energy devices throughout
the world are still in development or prototype stages and since the energy potential
of specific locations in the region is not well understood, assessments of the available
wave energy and environmental factors are necessary to determine if the community
would like to move forward with this emerging technology.
The first step in this assessment is to determine Yakutat’s wave energy resource.
In this phase, ACEP, funded by the City and Borough of Yakutat (CBY), deployed a bottom
-mounted mooring offshore of Yakutat to measure key parameters relevant to the placement
of an array of wave energy devices.
Project Update:
ACEP Affiliate Faculty Jeremy Kasper and UAF-SFOS mooring technician David Leech will
be traveling to Yakutat this week to recover an oceanographic mooring deployed off
of Yakutat's Cannon Beach. The mooring is recording information on local area waves
as part of the Yakutat area wave resource assessment to determine if the resource
is sufficient to provide wave based power for the community of Yakutat. Team members
will recover the mooring, download data from the past 5 months, refresh batteries
and then redeploy the mooring on the seabed to continue its data collection until
August of this year.
For more information on this project visit /projects/yakutat-wave-energy-resource-assessment.aspx
Project Lead: Jeremy Kasper, jlkasper@alaska.edu
Project Funding: City of Yakutat, Borough of Yakutat, Alaska Energy Authority
Photo Caption: Photo of Yakutat, Alaska.
Photo courtesy http://www.yakutatak.govoffice2.com/