Heat From Cold, Fuel from Food and Other Amazing Alternative Energy!

As I drove down to Seward on Monday enjoying one of those glorious Seward Highway drives that all too few Alaskans and even fewer tourists get to enjoy, I paused again to contemplate the amazing paradox of Arctic heat and cold.  It was chilly out (22F), but inside my car it was so toasty that I turned the heater off and rolled up my shirt sleeves!

Looking out over an ice covered Turnagain Arm, I was reminded of just how lucky we are in Seward to have an ice free bay on our doorstep.  I recalled my conversations back in early 2009 with our facilities team leads, Steve Carrick and Darryl Schaefermeyer and consulting engineer, Andy Baker about how we might begin to capture some of that energy.  That was ther genesis of the seawater heat pump project that we are now busily implementing and which will be a transformational emerging energy technology for South Central Alaska... oh, and did I mention the fuel it will save us?

Last week Andy and I were invited by the Alaska Energy Authority and the Alaska Center for Energy and Power to join five other emerging energy technology projects to share our initial experience with project implementation.  It was really informative to sit back and listen to renewable energy pioneers speak about their work.  In my mind, it was analagous to listening to the early farmers in the Palmer area in the 1930s speak about how they learned to make a living off the land in a brand new climate for American farmers. 

I was literally energized by both their "can do" approach to solving wickedly challenging problems (e.g. trying to keep an instream kinetic energy unit free of river debris) and the sheer audacity of their vision for affordable and practical energy solutions in a State where energy costs can determine the fate of communities.  It was particularly pleasing to see how a group of High School students from Cordova is using methane from food scraps in the school kitchen to power a lawn mower!

All of those presentations and the subsequent Q+A session will soon be uploaded to the ACEP emerging energy website -  http://energy-alaska.wikidot.com/eet.  You can also learn more about the seawater heat pump project there... we are on track to be operational by early summer and so stay tuned for future posts!