Video Shows Wind Turbine Maintenance in Remote Coastal Community

A new video produced by ACEP’s Amanda Byrd shows local wind turbine technicians from the coastal community of Kongiganak maintaining their turbines from a bird’s-eye view.

During times of sufficient wind, Kongiganak’s wind-diesel-battery storage-distributed heat system can operate without diesel. During diesel-off operation, the central battery energy storage and distributed electric thermal stoves in community members’ homes buffer fluctuations in wind power while supplying reliable power to the village and displacing heating fuel use in the homes.

The Kongiganak system, developed by Anchorage-based Intelligent Energy Systems, is one of only three remote Alaska power systems capable of diesel-off operation. The others include a wind-diesel-battery storage-distributed heat system powering the village of Kwigillingok (also developed by IES and capable of diesel-off since 2014) and a wind-diesel-thermal storage system powering an industrial facility on the island of St. Paul (developed by Northern Power Systems Corp. and TDX Corp. in 2000 and currently being upgraded by TDX).

The wind-diesel-battery-thermal storage system installed in 2001 in the village of Wales was the first system with battery storage to operate diesel-off; however, the system is not currently functional.

View an aerial video here and a video about the community’s wind energy-supplied thermal heat stoves here.

Photo: An image captured by drone shows wind technicians working on a wind turbine in Kongiganak, Alaska.  Photo by Amanda Byrd/ACEP.