Intern to Help Design Transmission Line for Wind Farm

Agustin Mendoza is a second year electrical engineering student at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He was born and raised in Mexico, in the city of Tijuana. Six years ago, he moved to Wasilla, Alaska, where he completed high school and started attending college. He heard about the ACEP internship from UAF Professor Rich Wies during an advising meeting, and he applied immediately.  

Throughout the summer, Mendoza will be involved in the design of a transmission system for a wind farm located in Delta Junction that will subsequently connect to Golden Valley Electric Association’s main electrical grid. This system will not only serve to transmit the converted power from the turbines but it will also include fiber optic cables to transmit live data of the turbine operations at all times. 

Mendoza will be guided by the experience of Delta Wind Farm owner Mike Craft and his mentor throughout the internship, ACEP faculty Daisy Huang. This project will serve as another step to the decentralization of power generation in the Delta area and the slow reduction in fossil fuel electric generation.

“Although this is a slow process, these are the kind of steps that propel us forward towards the future that we envision,” Mendoza said of the transmission system design process.

This internship is funded by the Office of Naval Research through the ACEP Utility Student Internship program. For more information on this project, please contact Daisy Huang at dhuang@alaska.edu. 

 

Agustin Mendoza is a utility student intern this summer working with Delta Wind Farm. Photo courtesy of Agustin Mendoza.