EDA Visits ACEP

Mr. Matt S. Erskine, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development and Chief Operating Officer of the Economic Development Administration (EDA), will be visiting ACEP on May 19.  His itinerary will focus on work being performed via the EDA's grant to establish the Alaska Center for Microgrid Technologies Commercialization (ACMTC), and will include a tour of ACEP's Power Systems Integration (PSI) laboratory.    

Dr. Marc Mueller-Stoffels, Principal Investigator for the effort, together with co-investigators George Roe (ACEP) and Adam Krynicki (Alaska Small Business Development Center) will discuss initial release of the Technologies Guidance Document, which highlights performance and interface criteria relevant to applications in the remote energy systems such as those serving many isolated communities in Alaska, and the similar systems evolving in the developing world.  The lab tour will include a review of ACMTC-associated updates to equipment in the PSI lab, enabling an expanded renewable energy integration (via a solar photovoltaic emulator) and broader representation of contingency events (via a system fault emulator).  The guidance document and the expanded laboratory capabilities will be integrated in a competition later this year, offering pre-commercial microgrid component and integration technology companies the opportunity to view for technical assistance and test time.    

Photo: Power quality analyzer.  T. Paris, UAF.