[Senate Hearing 115-37]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 115-37
INNOVATION IN ACTION_MICROGRIDS AND HYBRID ENERGY SYSTEMS
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FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 10, 2017
__________
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
_________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
25-978 WASHINGTON : 2018
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska, Chairman
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho RON WYDEN, Oregon
MIKE LEE, Utah BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan
STEVE DAINES, Montana AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
CORY GARDNER, Colorado JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
LUTHER STRANGE, Alabama CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada
Colin Hayes, Staff Director
Patrick J. McCormick III, Chief Counsel
Brianne Miller, Senior Professional Staff Member & Energy Policy
Advisor
Benjamin Reinke, Professional Staff Member
Angela Becker-Dippmann, Democratic Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Democratic Chief Counsel
Brie Van Cleve, Democratic Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from Alaska.... 1
Cantwell, Hon. Maria, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from
Washington..................................................... 4
WITNESSES
Koplin, Hon. Clay, Mayor, City of Cordova, Alaska, and CEO,
Cordova Electric Cooperative, Inc.............................. 7
Ellis, Dr. Abraham, Principal Technical Staff, Sandia National
Laboratories................................................... 14
Holdmann, Gwen, Director, Alaska Center for Energy and Power,
University of Alaska Fairbanks................................. 21
Kohler, Meera, President and CEO, Alaska Village Electric
Cooperative, Inc............................................. 30
Larson, Geoff, Co-Founder and President, Alaskan Brewing Company. 39
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Cantwell, Hon. Maria:
Opening Statement............................................ 4
Ellis, Dr. Abraham:
Opening Statement............................................ 14
Written Testimony............................................ 17
Holdmann, Gwen:
Opening Statement............................................ 21
Written Testimony............................................ 24
Kohler, Meera:
Opening Statement............................................ 30
Written Testimony............................................ 33
Koplin, Hon. Clay:
Opening Statement............................................ 7
Written Testimony............................................ 10
Larson, Geoff:
Opening Statement............................................ 39
Written Testimony............................................ 42
Supplemental Testimony....................................... 63
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
INNOVATION IN ACTION--MICROGRIDS AND HYBRID ENERGY SYSTEMS
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SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2017
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Cordova, Alaska.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m. AKST
at the Cordova Center, Cordova, Alaska, Hon. Lisa Murkowski,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LISA MURKOWSKI,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA
The Chairman. Well, good morning. It is a clear sign of
success when you have to open the back of the hearing room and
add additional chairs. So thank you all for being here.
This hearing of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee
for the United States Senate will come to order. I would like
to welcome all those who have joined us this beautiful Cordova
morning.
I would like to start by thanking the community of Cordova
for hosting us today. Mayor, it is always good to be back in
your town. I know that I am not supposed to pick favorites
among communities.
[Laughter.]
But I think the folks here in Cordova know that I have a
very, very special place in my heart for this community and for
its people and for its fish.
Tonight is always a fun evening where we recognize the
value, the benefit and really, all the good that comes to a
community when you have good, strong resources such as our
Copper River salmon. So there is good reason to celebrate, and
that reason to celebrate actually allowed us to select Cordova
as the site for a field hearing for the Energy Committee.
When Mayor Koplin appeared before the Committee in
Washington, DC, earlier this year, we were speaking about
infrastructure and the discussion was pretty broad-ranging. We
had the Mayor of Cordova speaking about a community like
Cordova--that is islanded in the sense of not being part of any
infrastructured grid. His testimony was so compelling in how he
described the attributes of this beautiful fishing community
that it sparked others on the Committee to say, maybe we should
have a field hearing there. I think it might have been
suggested initially by Senator Franken, and Senator Cantwell
and I looked at one another and said, why not?
[Laughter.]
Why not?
The opportunity to be here in person to see the integrated
energy system that has helped move this community off of diesel
generation is why we are here this morning, not just to focus
though on Cordova, but what it is that has been done in Alaska,
working with the benefits of our national labs and working with
those here in the state to really be pioneering and innovating
in the area of energy.
I am pleased to be able to bring to Cordova my friend and
my Ranking Member on the Committee, Senator Cantwell. This is
her second visit to the state now in the past 18 months.
We had an opportunity to go to Bethel not too many months
ago with Secretary Moniz and several other colleagues looking
at a different aspect of energy, but the focus on technology
innovation is something that we share great interest in.
We started off this energy trip by stopping in Seattle
yesterday, and Senator Cantwell hosted as we toured the Bullitt
Center, the world's greenest commercial building. When you
think about innovation in building technologies and how so much
can be done in a manner that you barely even notice it, looking
at what the Bullitt Center has done is incredibly
inspirational.
We also had an opportunity to visit McKinstry where we
talked about workforce training, cybersecurity efforts and just
the collaborative efforts that go on with cybersecurity,
efficiency through integrated systems, as we look at smart
buildings and how we can better monitor them.
Then we capped off the morning with a discussion with Bill
Gates about the future of energy innovation.
It was a pretty inspirational morning, and I really thank
Senator Cantwell for putting that together. But it is a great
opportunity, I think then, to take those discussions and what
we learned yesterday about that energy for the future and then
bring it back home, on the ground.
What does it mean? Particularly to high-cost energy states,
like Alaska, but where we have extraordinary opportunity with
our renewables, where we have incredible innovation that is
going on in small ways, in very discreet ways that perhaps do
not make the front page of anybody's newspaper except, perhaps,
the Cordova Times. But also how we can help, really help build
that out, because I think we recognize that innovation is
almost a necessity here in Alaska.
Self-reliance, ingenuity--these are hallmarks of the
people. We think about how our communities are so isolated. Our
energy infrastructure in this state is effectively the
interconnected grid that runs from the Kenai Peninsula up to
Fairbanks. But so many of our communities are isolated by our
geography, our distance, and have to rely on local generation
to supply power.
In so many of these communities, you have situations where
you have the fuel barge that comes in once, twice a year.
Mayor, in your community, and many in the AVEC region, that is
your reality. How you deal with that in cold, remote
environments is very, very difficult. Recognizing that so many
of our isolated communities have partnered with the state and
the Federal Government to integrate renewable resources into
their microgrids in an effort to provide greater sustainability
and, of course, greater affordability is so important.
We are going to hear from a great panel this morning. Mayor
Koplin will talk to us about what it is that we have seen here
in Cordova and how that level of innovation has made a
difference beyond just this community.
We also welcome this morning Gwen Holdmann, who is the
Director of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP). Some
of the innovative ideas that we have seen coming out of ACEP
are really, again, very inspirational.
Meera Kohler, who is well known here in Cordova and around
the state, is the Chief Executive Officer of AVEC, the Alaska
Village Electric Cooperative.
It is not too often that you have a Senate Energy Committee
hearing where you have witnesses who have a six pack of beer in
front of them.
[Laughter.]
Geoff Larson, who is the CEO and Co-Founder of the Alaskan
Brewing Company, will provide, I think, a very important lesson
to us in terms of the types of innovation that we can see that
really do help our small businesses become more than small
businesses. The leadership that they have embraced down in
Juneau is really quite remarkable.
Dr. Abraham Ellis, our out-of-town or out-of-state visitor
today, we welcome you. Dr. Ellis is Principal Technical Staff
for the Sandia National Laboratories and his focus is on
renewable integration in remote areas.
So again, we think about the innovation and how innovation
is best facilitated when you have collaboration at different
levels, whether it is the local, the state, the tribal, the
federal. This is how we can be helpful at the federal level to
try to help build out those frameworks.
We have a couple things going on in Washington that perhaps
you have not heard about because the Washington news has been
preoccupied by other things. On Thursday morning, there was a
very important hearing in Washington and it was not the Senate
Intelligence Committee, it was our Energy Committee, that was
not talking about the former Director of the FBI, but we were
talking about innovation in energy and how it drives down
costs. It was, I thought, a great, exciting, dynamic hearing. I
think more people should have plugged into that one for,
really, direction and inspiration in terms of what can be had
to help advance this country.
Senator Cantwell and I continue to work on our energy bill
that we have been working on now for about a year and a half,
maybe two years. We have a partnership in energy that, I think,
is recognized in Washington as being good, constructive,
enduring and persistent and we will persist with our efforts to
get energy updates that will help our communities, our country,
for the long haul.
So, Dr. Ellis, I appreciate you and all the members of our
panel being here. I want to recognize those here at the Cordova
Center that have helped to facilitate this hearing this
morning--Cathy Sherman, Mimi Briggs and Jason Gabrielson, as
well as the Energy Committee staff that have helped to
facilitate it.
Senator Cantwell, I cannot thank you enough for being here.
I appreciate not only your engagement on this issue here this
morning but the bigger aspects of energy policy that together
we are working to help advance.
So, welcome. The floor is yours before we turn it over to
our panel of distinguished witnesses.
STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON
Senator Cantwell. Well, Madam Chair, thank you so much for
this invitation to come to Cordova. I have to be honest, when
we had our hearing in Washington, DC, and the Mayor promised
Copper River salmon, he had my attention.
[Laughter.]
My ears perked up. I noticed last night when we got in, we
almost had to speak in code to get it on the menu.
[Laughter.]
I thought when we told the waitress and she, kind of,
looked over toward the Mayor, she was like, oh yes, it is on
the menu, okay.
[Laughter.]
So, thank you, Mayor.
[Laughter.]
For delivering it, and for the hospitality. Cordova is well
known in the Puget Sound region and we appreciate the
relationship between our fishing industry and so many aspects
of the economy.
I am sure Mr. Larson is going to tell me about how he buys
hops from the Yakima Valley and many, many other things.
[Laughter.]
Our states are tied together and they have been
historically, and we continue to work together on that. I look
very much forward to listening to the panelists and hearing
about these issues this morning.
I want to thank you, Madam Chairman, for coming to Seattle
yesterday, to tour the facilities at McKinstry and the Bullitt
Center. I think we agree that the next steps in energy system
delivery improvements need to be made so that we can continue
to drive down costs to our consumers and make our businesses
competitive.
I would have to say one of the highlights of my day
yesterday was watching Senator Murkowski show a picture to Bill
Gates of how to grow lettuce in a small container in her
office, as is done by so many villagers all across Alaska in
the school system. I just thought that was so great because we
had just heard this global picture about energy and I think she
was doing a fantastic job of bringing it right back down to
today, because what we are able to deliver today really matters
to the people of Alaska.
I thought you would have been proud of her and proud of her
focus on these issues, just as you should be, as it relates to
the Energy Policy Modernization Act that we have been working
on. As she mentioned, we were successful at getting it out of
the Senate but did not quite get the full attention of our
House colleagues. We are now trying to get their full attention
as they have a little more time. But let me assure you there is
no deterrent here when it comes to Senator Murkowski's
dedication to this issue. She and I, with her taking the lead,
marched across the Capitol one night at ten o'clock to get
something out to staff and house members, trying to get their
attention. So, she will go the extra mile, and I thank her for
that.
I thank all of our witnesses today for their contribution
to this discussion.
You know, today's topic about microgrids and hybrid energy
systems is really, really important, and the one thing I hope
that Alaskans take away from this hearing is how important it
is that you continue to pioneer in this area.
There are so many important things to discuss, but clearly
the concept of ``necessity is the mother of invention'' comes
to mind here, that Alaskans are dealing with this issue of
anywhere from $.50 per kilowatt to $1.50 kilowatt hour in rural
villages. So 5-15 times the average of what a consumer is
paying in the lower 48 really does drive the level of
discussion and attention to detail here on this issue.
By making sure that Alaskans continue to look at ways to
diversify all of the very vulnerable fluctuations in oil prices
is something, I think, we are going to hear about, as well as
reliable hybrid energy systems with renewable microgrids,
coupled with diesel and renewable sources.
I can't wait to hear how all of these things--hydro, wind,
geothermal--are working together to help Alaskans maximize and
create opportunities.
I know that Alaskans are global leaders, not only in self-
reliance, but also in microgrid technology. This is something
that would have huge applications all around the globe, and you
are continuing to pioneer here. Alaska is already home to 200
microgrids, 70 of which are powered by renewable sources,
including hydropower, biomass, geothermal, wind and solar. That
is 12 percent of the world's renewable hybrid microgrid
systems, right here in Alaska.
You really are pioneering something that will pay dividends
for all of us in the future--smarter, cheaper controls,
integration of technologies, microgrid solutions--not just for
remote communities, but for hospitals, for schools, for our
challenges as we look at reliability.
And the Chair mentioned this issue a little bit, of
cybersecurity. We definitely had a discussion yesterday about
that, about what we need to do to upgrade the entire grid
system and critical infrastructure, like pipelines, for the
potential of cybersecurity attacks. This isn't something that
might happen tomorrow. This is something that is happening
every single day and our utilities and others are fighting
against that.
When you think about it, the application of microgrids and
the technology of microgrids is another example of how you
maintain services if those kinds of attacks happen, the
microgrids can build some insulation and some security layers
into the system. So I just encourage you to continue to pioneer
this technology.
Regional energy solutions should be a priority for our
nation. And the reason that is so clear to me here in Alaska
today is because these solutions help build a robust system
that takes advantage of our national labs, and I am so glad our
labs are here today, together with academia and the private
sector. These are the people who are going to take these ideas
and commit them to real life action and we need to continue to
make progress on them.
I have been a strong proponent of performance metrics for
microgrids and investing in matching federal dollars to help
increase the grid resilience. We were proud to work together,
as my colleague said, on the energy bill to tailor the needs to
places like Cordova, and also places like Anchorage and
Seattle, so that the interconnectedness is there. But we are
also exposed to natural disasters, forget cybersecurity for a
minute. Natural disasters can happen and the notion is that we
need to have a strategy. I think both Alaska and Washington get
this very clearly, about how the grid can be disrupted and what
we would need to do to set up a system to help build more
resiliency for our states. I look forward to hearing from all
the witnesses here and to hear the input and suggestions as we
continue to deal with this issue at the national level.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention--I do not get to stay
for this big celebration tonight, but maybe in the future I
could come back. I certainly support the efforts of science in
the marine area that is going strong here in Cordova. As a
member of the Commerce Committee, I'm focused on the upcoming
reauthorization of Magnuson-Stevens. It is very important that
we continue to have great science applied to our fisheries, and
I look forward to working with the community on those issues.
I feel so excited to hear from our witnesses today. Again,
Mayor, thank you for delivering. I see that might also be a
parting gift that I will definitely take----
[Laughter.]
I thought it was only one. I thought we were going to have
to fight over it.
[Laughter.]
Okay, I am happy now.
[Laughter.]
Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cantwell.
It is always about the fish.
[Laughter.]
But just thank you, thank you for being here and for your
leadership on this and the recognition. I think it is important
for those who are attending the hearing this morning and those
who will later read the record, to understand how much Alaska
is pioneering.
When you repeated the statistic, 12 percent of the hybrid
microgrids in the world are here in our state--sometimes I
think we do not think that we are being that innovative or
pioneering. We just figure things out. And sometimes we say,
gosh, we just did that with a little duct tape and made it
happen. But I think what we need to be reminded of is that
others are looking. They are watching. They are trying to learn
from us. And that, hopefully, is very empowering to each of
you. It certainly is to me.
Mayor Koplin, we are going to ask you to lead off the
panel. Mayor Koplin, of the City of Cordova. He will be
followed by Dr. Abraham Ellis, who is the Principal Technical
Staff at Sandia National Laboratories; Ms. Gwen Holdmann, who
is the Director for Alaska Center for Energy and Power; Meera
Kohler, Chief Executive Officer for Alaska Village Electric
Cooperative; and Mr. Geoff Larson, CEO and Co-Founder of the
Alaskan Brewing Company.
For those who are not familiar with how a Senate hearing is
conducted, we ask each of our witnesses to provide their oral
testimony, trying to limit it to about five minutes or so. Your
full statements will be included as part of the record. When
each of you have concluded your remarks, Senator Cantwell and I
will begin a series of questions, going back and forth.
We will allow for the record to be kept open so that if you
would like to supplement, or if we have additional questions,
it does become part of the full Committee record. So even
though we are not conducting this in Washington, DC, it is
being recorded and transcribed as part of the full Committee
record for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Mayor, thank you for having us in your beautiful community
and thank you for your leadership in so many different areas.
STATEMENT OF HON. CLAY KOPLIN, MAYOR, CITY OF CORDOVA, ALASKA,
AND CEO, CORDOVA ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE, INC.
Mr. Koplin. Thank you, Senator Murkowski and Ranking Member
Cantwell. It's good to have you here this morning.
As Senator Murkowski mentioned I am Clay Koplin, Mayor of
Cordova, Alaska, and CEO of Cordova Electric Cooperative (CEC).
We welcome you to the City of Cordova and the ancestral
homeland of the Native village of Eyak. We're so pleased to
engage in this exciting conversation.
Cordova really is an ideal location for having this
discussion about street-smart innovation, resilient microgrids
and hybrid energy systems that characterize many of our more
fortunate Alaskan utilities and the communities they serve. We
really do excel at innovating, at marshalling lean resources
and integrating unlikely and seemingly incompatible
technologies into our energy systems, often improving the
products and the applications in the process.
My primary focus this morning is going to be on the
innovation piece, kind of with the backdrop or context of CEC's
hybrid microgrid system.
So how can we accelerate innovation and improve the
development and operation of microgrids and hybrid energy
systems? I think it revolves around three opportunities. One,
we need to increase the prominence and the participation of the
innovators on the low end. And please carry that message back
to Bill Gates. I've read through all their materials and
they're, kind of, missing the little guys. Continue to fund the
national programs and the departments in our national
laboratories and their important roles, and bring industry and
government closer to the problem, like you're doing today
actually, before the solutions are developed so that we, as the
end users and innovators, can weigh in and be a part of that
process as it's happening.
Two weeks ago, CEC and Meera Kohler co-hosted a Canadian
off-grid utility association's biennial meeting right here in
Cordova. Gwen Holdmann also attended that event, as did an
engineer from Greenland's utility, Nukissiorfiit. And on Gwen's
recommendation to the U.S. State Department, I was able to
travel to Greenland last October and share some of the best
practices that we've developed right here in Cordova. They're
now operating one of their hydro projects at well above its
rated capacity because we figured out how, with our 100 percent
underground power lines, to leverage our good power factory
here in town to get more out of our equipment with a
manufacturer's concurrence and warranty. So we shared that with
them.
Alex Hagmueller, one of the neighbors right down the street
from me in Cordova, who was born and raised here, grew up
working in local machine shops and commercial fishing before he
decided to go back to Oregon State University and pursue his
mechanical engineering degree. And while he was there he joined
his friend, Max Ginsberg, and founded AquaHarmonics in
designing a wave energy generator in their garage, out-of-
pocket, and ultimately won the Department of Energy's $1.4
million Wave Energy Prize.
Alex is a product of his environment, and we need to
support and strengthen these rural ecosystems and their role in
innovating, just as the Wright Brothers did from their bicycle
shop, and as Hewlett and Packard, and Jobs and Wozniak did from
their garages.
In 2004 we had a submarine cable that goes north out of
town here to our Humpback Creek project that was damaged in a
weather event. We used a car battery and a hand-held voltage
meter to pinpoint that fault in a three-and-a-half-mile long
cable to within ten feet, and we repurposed and recycled wire
reels and used local boats and divers and careful logistical
planning to cut and slice and repair that cable and put it back
in service. And it's still operating today--under $60,000, less
than three months, and a conventional repair would have easily
cost $1 million and taken over a year, resources we just don't
have.
So how does this innovation happen and what's the end
result? The right people in the right place at the right time
with the right partners. We're really fortunate that many of
our staff at Cordova Electric were born and raised here in
Cordova, went elsewhere to get their technical skills and their
educations and then they brought it home. That's where our
capacity and our leadership on the forefront of this energy
transformation is derived from. Our core strength is our people
and what they do and how they do it. So we need to build on
that momentum and use the lessons learned to benefit
communities and industries across the country more broadly.
We at CEC continue our march toward a full smart grid
capability with 100 percent local renewable sourcing of our
local energy supplies. This will someday allow distributed
generation, energy storage, home appliances, electric vehicles,
businesses and industrial equipment and lighting to
electronically and automatically communicate with our own high
capacity energy supply system. That's really what smart grid is
going to look like, and that's how we can allow renewable
energy to be deployed when its available and to charge those
storage devices and then discharge and kind of go into
hibernation when it's not available. The whole system becomes
flexible and interactive based on the technology platforms that
are being developed.
The National Renewable Energy Lab recently met with the
Native village of Eyak. I'm glad to see Daryl and the Tribal
Chairman here. They came to Cordova, and after a quick dialog
with the Native village of Eyak, said, you know what? You are
not a candidate for technical support. You are a candidate for
a best practices hearing on our part. They came out here and
spent four days picking our brains and trying to figure out
what's the secret sauce that you have going here? And a lot of
it just boils down to really working together within the
community here, as organizations, to move the ball forward.
One of those two staff decided she wants to do her
sabbatical here in Cordova, and I hope she can. Both of them
looked around and said, really, this can be a National Lab
outpost--you have the infrastructure, and human and
organizational capacity to really contribute. So we need the
technology outpost like that in Alaska where we can return at
least as much benefit to the partners and the industries and
the governments that we work with as we derive from it.
Alaskans face such a challenging environment with such
limited resources, similar to Washington, as you mentioned, in
many ways, which is why we have to collaborate. It's why I sit
on the ACEP's Board of Directors. It's why I work with Meera
with the Statewide Utility Managers group and join her in
sitting on as many national organizations, Board of
Trusteeships and places as we can to bring that technology back
and learn how we can collaborate better.
The energy storage project that we're currently working on
with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power and Sandia National
Labs is really exciting and it's a perfect example of how we
marry that high technology to that, kind of, street-smart
innovation and take us all to a better place.
When Rob Royce, who is out in the audience here with ABB,
talked to me a few months ago about Cordova maybe being a smart
grid demonstration city for ABB, I got really excited but we
have to figure out how to make that happen. We have to give Rob
the tools to be able to go back to his corporate leadership and
say, hey, not only does Cordova have the capacity to pull
something like this off, but you have the support at the state
and federal level to stand behind this and make something cool
happen and move us all forward.
I know ABB will walk away a better company, with better
products and better applications than they came here with, but
we just have that same challenge of showing them and getting
them visibility to what we do and how we do it.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I really
encourage any questions you have to ask here at the end or
through the questions for the record and strongly encourage you
to support the investments and partnerships in Alaska and
Cordova and other organizations within the state where we've
already established a really good foundation from which we can
build a bright future.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Koplin follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Clay. It is good to be in this
technology outpost. I never really thought about it that way,
but here we are in the technology outpost of Cordova, Alaska.
Dr. Ellis, tell us how the national labs fit in with so
much of what is going on. I think you had a great segue there
from the Mayor.
STATEMENT OF DR. ABRAHAM ELLIS, PRINCIPAL TECHNICAL STAFF,
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES
Dr. Ellis. Absolutely.
Let me start with saying good morning and thank you,
Chairman Murkowski and Ranking Member Cantwell, for the
invitation to share my perspectives about this very important
topic of microgrids and hybrid energy systems.
I'd like to commend the Committee for the location of
choice. I'm looking forward to tasting the good salmon here.
Haven't had a chance yet, but the reputation precedes you here,
so that's awesome.
Cordova certainly exemplifies, as the Mayor says, the
magnitude of the challenge that we have to deal with to meet
the energy needs of remote communities but also exemplifies
what is possible when the right stakeholders come together to
work on a sustainable solution.
As we learn more about Cordova's success stories today, I
think it's very important for all of us to remember that many
communities here in Alaska and across the world have struggled
with meeting their energy needs every day.
Today what I'd like to do is convey three messages. The
first one is that microgrids represent still, a very complex
technical challenge with significant unresolved technical
questions that really merit additional research and
development. Second, I'd like to say that microgrids have been
and will continue to be a really effective incubator for new
technologies that are useful for the grid. And third,
advancements of microgrids not only support the needs of these
remote communities and island communities, but they are also an
important ingredient to national energy resilience and they're
also drivers for grid modernization.
Let me share with you a little bit of my own personal and
professional experience with microgrids. I grew up in a small
town in Panama, actually, isolated from the grid, where
electricity evolved there in that town in much the same way as
I imagined it did here in Cordova. It started with a few diesel
generators in stores and coffee processing plants. Eventually
we added a hybrid electric plant and a small distribution grid.
The benefits for us, as you can imagine, were very broad
and immediate. However, even though electricity was, you know,
expensive and unreliable, it was very welcome in the community.
It was very difficult. We struggled, actually, with maintaining
the system, keeping it operational and then planning for growth
for the future, always a challenge.
My first job, that's 25 years ago or so, promoted
sustainable rural electrification in Latin America. There I met
some people that actually worked with Meera Kohler until now,
so that's a small world, isn't it? And this is like Guatemala
and Southern Mexico.
Even though the cost was very high, even then, it made
very, very, good sense to demonstrate the use of solar and wind
power for critical applications in the community like water
pumping and refrigeration. A few of the larger communities
chose to work with us to add renewables and storage to their
diesel plants, which resulted, you know, back then with some of
the earliest hybrid systems in operation, successfully.
These early efforts, some of them led by Sandia and other
national laboratories, demonstrated the feasibility of
drastically reducing diesel fuel consumption while keeping the
lights on for longer hours. We also documented some of the key
challenges that really makes sustainability and replicability
difficult. And the first one was initial cost. It continues to
be an issue today, even though the benefits in the long run are
greater, the initial cost is a huge barrier. Second is
technology readiness. It was problematic at that time. Off-the-
shelf electronic equipment, things like storage systems,
degraded and sometimes failed faster than expected due to the
very difficult operating conditions, high humidity, temperature
swings, things like that. Possibly the most challenging issue
was institutional and human factors, actually. That was an eye-
opening lesson learned for me. These included things like the
lack of business models, poor access to technical expertise and
support, financing, all of these complicated by very difficult
logistics in remote communities.
I am sure that my colleagues in Alaska will attest to the
fact that these difficulties that we encountered so many years
ago are still very relevant today. Significant progress is
being made; however, here in Alaska, they are supported by
entities like the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, working
hand-in-hand with communities and utilities. Because the cost
of remote energy, as Senator Cantwell said, is high in these
communities, it makes good sense to consider new technologies
that may not be economically viable in other places.
A similar set of conditions is driving the adoption of
microgrid and hybrid system technologies in places like Hawaii,
DoD forward operating bases and other remote mission critical
installations.
Here I want to emphasize that remote microgrid developments
are also paving the way for modern national grid advancements.
Fundamentally, the same technologies used in remote microgrids
are being deployed within the larger interconnected power
system. In that context those technologies are delivering cost
savings for consumers. They're also delivering improved energy
resilience for applications like transportation, communications
and so on.
There is a lot to be done still. Microgrids can be more
reliable, more affordable, more scalable. Advanced microgrids,
as the Mayor said, can help us integrate higher quantities of
renewable energy and distributed energy resources and can
contribute to that secure and resilient national grid.
To achieve this vision, there is a need to further develop
and, you know, push forward, the underlying technical or the
underlying technologies such as energy storage and power
electronics. We still have work to do there. Controllers and
protection systems are particularly important in this setting.
We also need better methods, models and tools to support
optimal design and operation of these systems. And we also need
those kinds of tools to guide investment and even policy
decisions.
Finally, more work is needed to shepherd the orderly
evolution, and this is a big one, of technical standards that
will allow microgrid components to interact safely and securely
with each other with utility systems and with energy markets of
the future. This work involves complex, as I said, technical,
institutional and human factors.
The Department of Energy and National Laboratories are
playing a critical role in this space. It makes a lot of sense
as this is a challenge of national importance.
In closing, let me reiterate remote microgrid technologies
for the benefit of Alaskans also has the potential to enable a
more modern, secure and resilient national grid. This Committee
is very aware of the impact that investments in energy
technologies have had over time. One example that is often
brought up is Sandia's advanced drilling technology, which has
been reviewed by this Committee in the past. In my opinion,
microgrid research and development will have an even greater
impact nationally.
With that, I'll say thank you very much, again, for your
attention, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Ellis follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Ellis.
Ms. Holdmann. Welcome, Gwen.
STATEMENT OF GWEN HOLDMANN, DIRECTOR, ALASKA CENTER FOR ENERGY
AND POWER, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS
Ms. Holdmann. Thank you.
The Chairman. You are the only one that I know that came to
the hearing today by sailboat.
Ms. Holdmann. That's right.
[Laughter.]
Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman Murkowski and Ranking Member Cantwell,
for the opportunity to be here this morning.
I direct the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, and we
play this unique role. We're based at the University of Alaska
Fairbanks, but we work really closely hand-in-hand with our
communities and utilities to make sure the kinds of
technologies, that they're aware of these next generation
emerging technologies, and we're working with them to try to
make sure that they are adapted in ways that are going to meet
the kinds of goals of reducing energy cost and increasing
reliability and resiliency of our small grids here. On the
other hand, we're working with developers and industry to try
to make sure that their technologies are developed in such a
way that they are going to be appropriate and are going to be
successful and resource a small grid environment. We have a
laboratory at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, so they do a
lot of testing of technology before we try to move it into the
communities where it can be deployed and taken advantage of by
our utilities and our residents.
You know, I really appreciate the fact that Senator
Murkowski has done such an excellent job in advocating for
Alaska's excellence in terms of microgrid technologies. I think
it's been mentioned here several times that Alaska does have
more microgrids than basically anywhere else in the world that
has grid-scale renewables connected to them.
One of the things I want to highlight is that a lot of that
expertise that Alaska has in terms of developing these sorts of
systems, really resides within our utility industry here in
Alaska. And so, I'm really happy to be here with both Clay
Koplin and Meera Kohler, who are really two of the people that,
I think, are really leaders in the way that our utilities are
creatively adapting new technologies and new ideas and really
looking for what the energy grid of the future is going to look
like, what the systems of the future are going to look like.
I also appreciate that Senator Cantwell pointed out the
fact that we're not just talking about these unique, small
situations in Alaska, but that this really does represent the
way that we are going to transform the electric grid and the
rest of this country in the future too, which will be around
greater integration of renewables, more distributed generation
and just trying to form these microgrids that enable more
resilient and reliable grid infrastructure across the country.
I do agree with you that Alaska is really that place where
we're pioneering a lot of those technologies that will get us
there.
The world has been more and more recognizing that Alaska is
doing some unique things here, that we're really pushing these
levels of renewable energy generation like Meera is to a level
that would make more utility operators pretty nervous. And
they're doing that to these very, you know, kind of important
strategies not just incorporating energy storage, but also
demand response, looking at smart grid enabling technologies.
There's a lot of things going on here that are quite
interesting.
We have the Arctic Remote Energy Networks Academy. We're
bringing people from all over the Arctic together to do
knowledge sharing about these sorts of microgrids. We're hoping
to expand that to a more global level, but we have people
coming from Greenland and Canada and Russia and other places in
the Arctic region that can benefit from these sorts of
solutions. They're coming to Fairbanks in two weeks and then
we're taking them to Kotzebue and on to Nome in that particular
case. But those are examples of where Alaskans can share that
expertise.
I'm also really excited to talk about some positive
examples for state, local and federal collaboration. In
particular, the last time that you had a hearing in Bethel, I
talked about the need for an Alaska hub for energy innovation
and deployment--something that we were really hoping to work
with the Department of Energy on. I'm really excited to tell
you that that has moved forward, not with the Department of
Energy, although we hope to bring them on as a partner in the
future, but with the Office of Naval Research, who has invested
in Alaska to develop an energy innovation ecosystem here that
goes all the way from our STEM, K through 12 education, through
the development of an Alaska Network for Energy Education and
Employment through REAP, all the way through funding our energy
accelerator here, or our small business accelerator, the Launch
Alaska program through testing and development of new energy
systems at the university and then deploying those in the
field.
That's a program that we're actually spinning up within the
next few months, and we'll be working on for the next three
years. That will give us a chance, for example, to be working
with Meera on a particular system that she's identified as a
need for her community which is the small amounts of energy
storage, a grid bridging system that will enable her to, in an
economical way, integrate both more renewables or just save
fuel by switching more efficiently between smaller and larger
diesel generators which are still going to be the backbone of
generation of rural Alaska for some time to come. So that
funding is allowing us to seek external partners to, kind of,
find those perfect solutions moving forward.
My colleague here from Sandia National Lab, Dr. Ellis, also
mentioned this project that we have through the Office of
Electricity. This is a great example, from my perspective, of
state and local collaboration because the Alaska Center for
Energy and Power and Cordova Electric Cooperative, we
identified this potential opportunity for energy storage here
around a bit of a unique paradigm for how that would be
integrated here, and we pulled in expertise through the Clean
Energy SAFE Alliance and requested expertise from,
specifically, from Sandia National Laboratory.
The Department of Energy responded to that request. The
project is led by, and we are setting the context locally here,
but Sandia National Lab is providing critical expertise to make
that project happen. Those are the kinds of ways that we want
to be partnering with our national labs. I think it's a really
great story.
Similarly, we have a lot of regional partnerships going on.
We worked really closely with the University of Washington on
the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC).
So we have three universities there, the University of Alaska
Fairbanks, UW and then Oregon State University that work with
the Department of Energy (DOE) on this regional collaboration
around hydrokinetic technologies. And we appreciate both of
your long-term support for ocean and river and instream energy
solutions.
I'm currently serving on the board of the University of
Washington Clean Energy Institute (CEI). I'm the only person
from another university that's serving in that role. And so,
that's another way that we're working really closely together.
We have a program that we call the Center for Microgrid
Technologies Commercialization, and it's a partnership between
the Economic Development Administration and the University of
Alaska. And we actually host the competition for companies that
have microgrid enabling technologies to test their technology
in our lab and work with our engineers with the idea of pushing
it out into communities in Alaska.
So we had our first round, our first competition, and we
just announced the winners a few weeks ago. And actually, UET,
UniEnergy Technologies, a battery manufacturer from your
region, from Mukilteo--am I saying that correctly?
Senator Cantwell. Yes.
Ms. Holdmann. --is actually the winner of that particular
award. We're going to be bringing their system up here to
Alaska, testing it in our laboratory. I actually hope that
someday we might see that system the next time you come back,
actually operating here in Cordova and providing that storage
solution that we've been working with Sandia to identify right
now.
That's really all I have to say. I apologize for going a
little bit over, but this need for driving partnerships, I
think, is really important. I'm really excited to hear that
you're still moving forward with this concept of an energy bill
because I think that we do need an update to create that
framework at the national level, but really for promoting these
partnerships and really pushing the understanding of what is
needed to the lowest common denominator where that's our
communities and our state, that we can be pulling in expertise
from the Federal Government. That's the type of framework that
we're excited to work around.
So, thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Holdmann follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Well said, great examples of partnership
there.
Meera, wonderful to have you here.
STATEMENT OF MEERA KOHLER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, ALASKA VILLAGE
ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE, INC.
Ms. . Thank you.
I do appreciate the opportunity to be here. Under your
tutelage, you have really pioneered, I think, a support system
for rural Alaska that is second to none.
So welcome to Cordova, both to the Ranking Member and to
the Chairman. I am going to take the privilege of saying that,
because Cordova was my home many years ago. It was where I
immigrated--I come from India; I came from New Delhi and
literally moved here.
[Laughter.]
So Cordova absorbed me. They embraced me, they made me a
part of them, so it will always be home. Every time I come back
here, my heart is just light with joy at being back here.
But I have been in the electric utility industry since
1979. Started out here in Cordova and have been the CEO of
three Alaskan utilities, a very small one in Western Alaska at
Manokotak, and one of the largest ones in Alaska which is
Municipal Light and Power which is the municipal utility
serving Anchorage, and now Alaska Village Electric Cooperative
(AVEC). I've been at AVEC for 17 years.
So my heart is very much in rural Alaska, and I have always
felt that rural Alaska has something to offer the entire world.
And we need to make it a quid pro quo situation.
A little bit about AVEC. We are a co-op, non-profit formed
in 1967. We now serve 58 communities. The latest community that
we added, actually, is about 200 miles Southeast of here. We're
in Napakiak now. I now have 1,000 miles between my farthest
West and my farthest East community and 800 miles North to
South, so it's a very vast area. These communities are very
small, average population is about 400-450 people, and the
average load in one of these communities is essentially about
half of a grocery store at Anchorage. So where I shop basically
equips two of my villages rolled together in terms of
electricity usage.
Despite the fact that Alaska is very energy rich; we have a
lot of natural resources but we're actually a very energy-poor
state. We sell a total of about 6.3 billion kilowatt hours in
Alaska which is half, less than half, of what Sacramento sells
in California. That's one community that sells twice as much as
the entire State of Alaska.
So that's a very stark difference, and what it tells you is
that our retail energy is very expensive. In our villages, I'm
very proud to say, our best rate is $.24 a kilowatt-hour in
Bethel and our highest is about $.68 a kilowatt-hour where we
have to fly fuel in.
But what's happening in these villages with such
communities are being held hostage to very high-cost energy.
And it's not even the electricity that's so expensive, it's the
heat and transportation. That's what eats their lunch, if you
will. So we really are totally focused on solutions for our
communities.
We do operate 50 microgrids and we serve those 58
communities. What we have been trying to do is basically create
the regional energy grid that Senator Cantwell mentioned
earlier. We shut down power plants. We've shut about six power
plants in the last 10 years or so and we are now serving those
communities through interties. And actually, I have worked with
Gwen on HVDC at a micro level to try to connect more villages.
The cost of building capacity in rural Alaska is extremely
high. It costs about $17,000 per service to establish utility
service, which is five times what it is in the lower 48, so
that puts into perspective what the costs are that we grapple
with.
We have collaborated to set up some pretty unique
microgrids. Gwen mentioned that we're able to do very high
displacements in our villages. We have a few communities where
we are displacing almost 40 percent of the diesel used for
generation with wind, and that's because we have highly
intelligent dispatch that we've actually created ourselves.
We have on staff, really, some of the world's most
ingenious minds, I think. And so, I really welcome the national
labs working with us to basically partner on solutions that are
going to allow even higher penetrations of wind and of solar.
I was at a breakfast meeting with Senator Murkowski and Jay
Faison at ACCF, which was fascinating, just a few weeks ago.
And I, actually just before that, a month before, had been in
conversation with Oklo which is developing the micro-nuclear
project. I think that those are going to be what turns Alaska
around.
I've always had this concept in my mind of the bubble gum
machine with all these little bubble gum balls in it but
contained a little nuclear fission material inside of it and
creates clean, emission-free, long-lasting energy for very low
cost. I'd like to see resources going into that concept.
We're working with Gwen and ONR on microgrid optimization
through the grid bridge system. We believe that it truly is
going to allow us to go diesel-soft in many of our communities.
We have to understand that we can be a test bed for
emerging technologies. We have to have something that's more
robust and that's street-ready because we can't afford to be in
a situation where a community goes black because a nascent
technology doesn't work. That's a life, health and safety
issue. If we have a multi-day power outage in one of our remote
communities, you're going to have people that are facing life
and death situations as a result of those outages. So we can't
afford to have that happen.
I just want to put a little plug in for the fact that, you
know, you're hearing today about the urban utilities in
Anchorage that are going to smart meters and they're so proud
of it. Well, hell, we've had those for more than 10 years.
[Laughter.]
Every one of our villages, we have smart meters and we have
virtual data and we have the ability to do innovative things.
I really appreciate you coming here to listen to us in our
home and understand how unique we are and how we really need
your support to help us to move further along. I think we can
go to some wonderful places.
So thank you again. I appreciate the opportunity to present
to you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kohler follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Great, Meera, we really appreciate that.
Okay, Geoff, bring it home and explain how beer fits into
energy.
[Laughter.]
Geoff Larson.
Ms. Kohler. And why doesn't he have a beer for each one of
us? That's what----
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Meera, it's not noon.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Kohler. It is somewhere.
[Laughter.]
STATEMENT OF GEOFF LARSON, CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, ALASKAN
BREWING COMPANY
Mr. Larson. Thank you, Senator Murkowski, Ranking Member
Senator Cantwell. I am intimidated by this panel because----
The Chairman. So are we.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Larson. ----because they represent communities and they
represent a broader, out-of-self type of responsibility.
Interestingly enough, beer has been one of the oldest
industries in the world. There are hieroglyphs on the walls of
the Egyptian tombs that describe the manufacturing process of
making beer. And so, when we started the brewery 31 years ago,
I would have to say I felt fairly humbled being in an industry
that had such rich history. But over the course of that period,
I have become acutely aware that the beer we make is dominated
by where we make it, and there are attributes of what we do
that are influenced by our environment.
One of them is that we live in a tough spot. We have to do
things differently because other people in other areas have
industry norms. Oh, it's always done this way. Well, what we've
discovered is that our attitude is a little bit different
because we have to do things differently because it's not
always done this way. Now, I'll give you a couple of examples.
When we started I don't think we really thought of ourselves as
being grossly innovative but the place creates the person.
One of the things that we do now, we call it Beer-Powered
Beer. We take a waste stream which is our spent grain. When you
make beer, you take grain, you steep it in hot water, and you
extract a lot of the good things that become the end product.
But the residual, the waste-spent grain, is something that
others can easily deal with in areas where they're close to
agricultural users, cattle feed and the like. But there are
other facilities that have to dispose of the grain in landfills
because they're not close to the agricultural communities.
For us, we knew that we didn't have much agriculture in
Juneau, so we very quickly realized we had to do things
differently. So we started drying our spent grain. We used a
portion of it for fuel, but grain is a very difficult thing to
burn. What we ended up doing is developing a process, which we
just received a patent for, in regards to using spent grain as
a sole fuel source for steam generation.
Heineken Brewing Company tried to do this in Namibia,
Africa, because they had a similar situation there. There
wasn't an agricultural user for their spent grain. It ends up
that they had to abandon the project and what they do is now
use a combination of traditional fuels with the spent grain.
Newcastle, in Manchester, England, also did the same thing.
They were in a municipal environment that they had to dispose
of the spent grain. It was very difficult. They spent $25
million trying to develop a process using spent grain as fuel.
They abandoned the project.
We're the only brewery in the world that is using this
waste stream as a fuel source for a steam boiler as the primary
fuel. We're targeting about 60 percent of our fossil fuel
replacement with spent grain.
The Columbian exchange price from spent grain is about $180
a ton, last I saw. At $2 a gallon of diesel, the value of that
spent grain to us is $350 a ton. The value is, kind of, an
indicator of what that means for breweries. The application of
this technology actually is much more broad than just beer.
Thirty-one years ago, I'm just making beer, but creatively
I think we're going to be able to change the world. And I think
the demonstrated examples that are being talked about here are
just that same thing.
The pioneers of yesteryear had challenges and they made it
work whether it be the railroad here in Cordova, the history of
this town or the White Pass Railroad, but it's giving me goose
bumps when I think about what we can transcend here from our
locale.
Now obviously, Washington State has a number of innovators
and their impact on the world is obvious. But I also think that
what we have may be for this portion of population but a
disproportionate geographic challenge. We think differently.
This state thinks differently, and that application can be
international in its impact.
Carbon dioxide is another example that we innovated with.
Carbon dioxide is a gas that we use to press our tanks. We use
it for blanketing, protecting the beer for its integrity. The
most common source of carbon dioxide is fossil fuels.
Low and behold when we're fermenting beer, a whole bunch of
carbon dioxide comes off in its fermentation. So, in 1998 we
started capturing all our CO2. In 1998, we were able to recover
800,000 pounds of CO2 from our fermentation. The fermentation
gas is from photosynthesis. It's a renewable resource, whereas
most all of the CO2 used by breweries is fossil-based. We
replaced it.
The steam generation that we're using right now for our
plant, partially from our spent grain, also has to be down-
stepped in pressure. It's enough to get to the pressure
reduction process--we're using a stream pro-gen plant--so that
we're reducing the pressure by, at the same time, generating
electricity.
This is not in place, it's just in the engineering phase at
this moment. We have a zero-power strip in our plant so that we
basically have the same phase coming in as going out. And it
just gives me goose bumps to be able to be talking about things
that are a little bit behind the scenes because we're just
making beer, you know, we're not saving lives. These people are
saving lives. We're just making beer.
[Laughter.]
I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and be
before this guest panel, but I also think that we have an
opportunity as individuals and individual companies to make an
effect that can be more broadly applied and the type of
platforms that we create are due to necessity.
So while there may be accolades, I have to say that
necessity is the mother of invention. In that light, the
opportunities that we are given here within the state, the
opportunities that we see every day and enjoy are one of the
reasons why we're here and we make it work.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Larson follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Great story, really a great story. I think it
is important to add that you are not just some small, local
brewer. You have the biggest distribution in the state and are
distributing around the country now. So, a remarkable level of
ingenuity that has allowed for an expansion to your business
that is really quite incredible. Thank you for sharing that.
You know, it does make me wonder as I listened to the panel
here and the conversation coming back to how Alaskans are
pioneering in so many different ways and different spaces. I
don't know whether it is because we have longer, darker winters
and we just have more time to think.
[Laughter.]
I think about the sleep of folks out here and those that
spent a lot of time in a wheelhouse just, kind of thinking,
maybe we have time, more time here to just think about
solutions to the daily problems that we have.
But, let me get to questions, not just musing because you
all have provoked such great thought here with all that you
have brought forward. I challenge any one of you on the panel.
Mayor, you spoke about AquaHarmonics and the great
innovation there that the wave generator, and the recognition,
that those local folks have achieved.
And the discussion also that you have raised, Meera, and it
was great to be with you at that panel a couple weeks ago about
micro-nuclear reactors and advanced storage issues.
Just, kind of, projecting out, where do you all see this
next generation of technologies going, that you think are
particularly promising, either in the near-term or the medium-
term, for solving some of the challenges that we are currently
faced with when it comes to microgrid and hybrid energy
solutions? And when you think about our coastline, when you
think about the marine hydrokinetic potential that we have
there, what are you looking at now as that next great
opportunity? Again, keeping in mind that it might not take over
the world, but it could transform a community here, what are
you working on that's exciting that you can share?
Clay?
Mr. Koplin. I'll answer in two little pieces and I'll jump,
kind of, right to the end game of smart grids.
So I envision a future where someone has a washer or dryer
set, for instance. The washer can hold a full year's supply of
soap and fabric softener and everything. Once I throw the
clothes in I don't care when it runs, as long as it's not in
the next 24 hours.
As I open my freezer and close it and take salmon in and
out of it and everything, it can learn my habits with very
inexpensive robot sensor technology. It's evolved so rapidly.
It can learn my habits. And if it's talking to our electric
system and knows when renewable energy is available, it can
decide when it wants/needs to cycle.
And if it's talking to the system that's, you know, if our
grid is also talking to all the other freezers in the system,
it can say, let's run these freezers, and then these, and then
these, in progression instead of all at once and actually
smartly manage people's appliances and uses in a fully
integrated way that can almost, kind of, create demand from the
user side. So that's a lot of where the technology can go
similar to electric vehicles.
Right now, we're working with Schweitzer again, and the
U.S. Air Force has a grid-to-vehicle program that they're just,
kind of, reaching the end of. And as I think you mentioned,
Senator Cantwell, the Department of Defense also has frontier
installations and what not.
But we have the Coast Guard here and as you know they're
considering two fast class cutters in Cordova, but imagine an
environment where they can not only provide their services here
but also engage with the Department of Defense, through the
Department of Defense in some of these new technologies where
these excess electric vehicles from the Air Force, with their
smart grid technology, our smart system can charge those one
day when we have some excess power, and then discharge them
back onto our grid.
I see a future smart grid where we can use automation and
sensor technology and this world class technology that
Schweitzer Engineering labs, one of our partners in Washington,
is really involved with.
A second little piece would be, oh, I lost my train of
thought. I was thinking about AquaHarmonics. But oh, one little
piece, about 15 years ago I wrote a little white paper with
Institute of the North on cryodams. We have such tremendous
amounts of steel and concrete required to build our
hydroelectric plants, yet we have glaciers that naturally dam
some of our rivers and develop huge repositories of water. So
why not do that intentionally? Why not use our local glacial
silt and wood pulp?
One hundred years ago, during World War I, the British--or
World War II--the British built a frozen aircraft carrier in
Canada. It took it three years to thaw out when it was done.
So, particularly in Greenland, where they have some excess
hydro in places, they can use that over transmission lines to
freeze materials and use that as our dams of the future, maybe.
And now that we have advanced micro technology of carbon
fibers to reinforce them, sensor technology could literally
blend in with the frozen material that can communicate the
stressors and strengths. We have a next layer of technology now
that can maybe make something like that possible.
We just find that we need to find a way to test it and
through FERC on federal land would be tough, but that's why
partners like Greenland, again, they have the necessity. They
have ice, rock and water and very little else. I mean, the
extra technology we can share with them.
The Chairman. One of the things that we saw yesterday that
was very interesting at McKinstry was basically just computer
panels. What we were looking at was all of the schools within a
particular school district and they could tell where you were
losing energy, where there was inefficiency.
You send a note off and somebody does something and the
next thing you know everything is handled. But, you know, when
you think about our schools and the amount of money that we
spend just to keep our schools heated and warm, so much so that
it comes out of the academic side of the budget equation. We've
got Senator Stevens here with us and he knows the impact to our
schools when our energy costs are high, which is from the smart
technologies that are out there. So, we could be doing so much
more.
Others? I'm over my time, but go ahead, Meera or Gwen or
Dr. Ellis? Go ahead.
Ms. Kohler. Well, you know, we have demonstrated very high
penetration renewables in our communities, but we can go a lot
higher. We now have 15 communities served with wind with eleven
wind farms.
We've got two more large turbines going in and one of them
is going to be a pretty unique installation because it's a 900-
kilowatt machine in the community of St. Mary's which is a very
small community.
We do have the ability and I'm going to be connecting them
with another village which is still going to be at about 150
percent of peak capacity with that wind turbine. And so, what
we're working on with the grid bridge concept, I think, is
going to get us a long way.
But one of the technologies that, I think, is not being
paid enough attention to is the potential to use hydrogen from,
you know, water. Everybody has got water. Every village has
water.
Can we come up with a relatively low-cost, hydrolysis
program to create hydrogen to super charge the diesel fuel that
we are using? I mean, it's all about efficiencies. That's the
reason we have wind is to get the most kilowatt-hours per
gallon of diesel fuel.
If we can use the surplus wind to create hydrogen to get
even more efficiency out of that diesel that, I think, is a
relatively seamless technology. Right now, it's not commercial,
but maybe that's something that we could focus on as to how we
can put some of that excess renewable energy to good use.
And also, the issue of connection. Alaska, as I said, is an
energy-starved state and what Gwen and I had and a few others
have partnered on, Rob also, is the concept of HVDC, a large
HVDC grid across the State of Alaska which would allow us to
put very large amounts of renewables in with very inexpensive
natural gas from the North Slope and displace millions of
millions of gallons of diesel across the state to feed our
energy-starved industry.
As I said, Alaska sells six billion kilowatt-hours a year
which is half, less than half, of what Sacramento sells. That's
just a crying shame.
Our industry is starved. We can't attract good industry,
like Cira Farms, the high-tech technologies up to Alaska
because we don't have affordable energy. There is no substitute
for affordable energy.
So I think that there are opportunities for partnership and
evolution that are second to none.
Ms. Holdmann. I'll just, kind of, follow up on what Meera
is saying.
I think right now, what Meera and other utility managers
are doing in Alaska is really pretty incredible. I just want to
highlight that one more time.
You said 40 percent displacement of diesel fuel in some of
your communities but at an instantaneous penetration level
she's getting to 100 percent on a relatively regular basis. I
don't know how many utility managers in other parts of the
country would feel comfortable with 100 percent penetration of
wind energy on their grid. That's just not something that's
done anywhere else, I don't think, in the United States on a
regular basis. And so, right now, I think what we're really
focused on is improving process efficiencies in the short-term.
How can we do better along the lines of what we're already
doing? That could be, like for Clay, looking at how do you
factor in frequency regulation using your hydro so that you can
maximize your hydro potential and use other ways of actually
getting that frequency regulation where right now you're losing
10 or 20 percent of your potential production because of that?
Or for Meera with this grid bridge system, this is going to
give her the chance to eke out a little bit more efficiency.
A lot of the utilities in Alaska are using this demand
response, basically having thermal loads and other loads in
specific locations like, for example, in Kotzebue they have an
electric boiler in the hospital there that is turned on and off
based on how much wind energy is being produced at any one
time. And the utility controls that.
And so, that's a way that we're really able to manage the
energy production as a whole, not just looking at electric
power, but also these heating loads. And there's days where
they don't need to run their other, their alternative diesel-
fired boiler at all. They're just running on electric power.
So, looking at distributed controls, we are working with
ABB on that. They've been a big player up here in Alaska. I
know you heard from Siemens the other day in their testimony to
you.
You know, getting these companies up here to partner with
Alaskans is really important, and you can help advocate for
that because we can work with them to harden their
technologies. I think that's something in the short-term that
we're thinking is important.
Electric vehicles is a piece of that and then also this
built environment question, you know, we've been doing a lot.
The Cold Climate Housing Research Center is not represented
here today but they have a Northern Shelters program, really
making sure that our building systems are appropriate for the
environment is important.
Long-term, I agree with you, Meera. Transmission, trying to
figure out ways to reduce the cost of transmission using like
multi-nodal HPVC is something we're quite interested in up here
because that would be the strategy for building out a grid in
larger parts of the state.
Energy storage continues to be the Holy Grail. I don't
think that we have the optimal solution for that yet. So,
that's something that I'd like to see the Federal Government
continue to invest in.
Hydrokinetics, ocean, wave, river energy. That's something
that's really important up here in Alaska because if we can
find effective and cost-effective ways to take advantage of our
water resources, it would be very beneficial. Almost every
community in Alaska is based on some sort of body of water.
And then nuclear, you mentioned the small, mini nuclear
solutions and the small nuclear battery that you can bring in
to these remote places. I really think that is something that
we need to be looking at. I'm not always a proponent of Alaska
needing to be a first adapter of these kinds of technologies,
but long-term if we had really safe, reliable, small, mini-
nuclear reactors, that would be an excellent solution for many
remote places in the state too.
The Chairman. Senator Cantwell.
I know we will have an opportunity to continue this kind of
open dialogue.
Senator Cantwell. Well, thank you, Madam Chair.
This is really fascinating. I have so many things that I
want to ask, so I will try to come up with a couple of broad
things for all of you.
I think for Gwen and Dr. Ellis, on the topic of technology
demonstration. The Pacific Northwest Lab did a demonstration
out on the Olympic Peninsula on dryer usage and other
appliances and showed that you would get double-digit savings.
But it strikes me that our national lab is going out to one
geographic region of our state trying to prove a theory. But to
your point, Gwen, why wouldn't microgrids just be a go-to
technology for people every day of the week? If you were either
the national interest or a private interest, the microgrid is
the best beta test you could possibly ever have. I mean, you
could probably get it done in a week and you could find out
what is happening.
I know we have in our bill a provision to promote some
demonstration projects on microgrids, but should we be even
more aggressive given how much information that we could learn
by doing these small-scale deployments? We would just be
getting so much information back so quickly.
Ms. Holdmann. Senator Cantwell, I would just like to make
the point that I really appreciate you recognizing that we have
this unique opportunity to be testing and demonstrating things
in Alaska. We actually don't like to think of it as being
demonstration and pilot projects. We're a little bit, we're
beyond that.
Senator Cantwell. Right.
Ms. Holdmann. We just want to make the step work, not just
over some short period of time where there's some funding, but
we are looking down through for the long haul and making these
things work and our utility managers are really very, very
willing to be a strong partner in that.
I think one thing that both of you are, I believe, aware of
is that at the federal level our Alaskan grids don't count as
microgrids, according to the federal definition by Department
of Energy. And that's hindered us really significantly in terms
of being part of these longer-term testing kinds of scenarios.
A microgrid at the federal level for the Department of
Energy is a small grid that can island and isolate itself, but
it needs to be able to connect to a larger grid or else it's
considered separate, you know, an islanded grid. And so,
there's money put aside for looking at specific situations
around islanded grids. But I really think that we need to be
thinking of this as just a microgrid and the fact that we're
not connecting to a larger grid is really irrelevant because
the difficult part is about the islanding part.
And so, when the Department of Energy, you know, calls us
out as not counting, I think it really hinders our ability to
be part of that national solution.
Senator Cantwell. Dr. Ellis, should we be doing more
demonstrations on microgrids?
Dr. Ellis. In my opinion, absolutely. There are many, as I
said in my opening remarks, interesting technical questions
that haven't been answered in detail.
Just to give you a couple of examples. Some of the
microgrid demonstrations that we do work hand-in-hand with
stakeholders and those have to do with high security
applications, for example, where we don't, not only want
reliable electricity from the point of view of electrons, you
know, being delivered to the load, we also want to make sure
that those energy systems are cyber-secure.
And so, sometimes we don't think about these things, but
for some applications it's absolutely paramount. So we're
trying to push the limits on what it means to have secure
energy supply that is able to withstand physical and cyber
threats in different applications. So, with definitely some
more of that.
I also want to point out that, you know, this issue of
trying to get to 100 percent renewables in practice is very
hard. What has been talked about today in some communities--
kind of, get there by putting in 10, 15, you know, 20, 25
percent. By the time you get to the kind of penetration levels
that we were talking about in some places here in Alaska,
things become rather difficult. It's not a lot of fun to think
that you're relying 100 percent on inverters and batteries and
things that, you know, you hope nothing bad happens.
So we're looking at cases within these microgrids that
might be a little bit extreme so that we can in the future
guarantee that these systems really are robust. For example,
when you're running on 100 percent solar or wind some of the
things that the engineers worry about is what happens when
there is a fault on a line. With a typical power system that
has rotating machines, like a micro hydroelectric, the system
is able to ride through that fairly well. But the dynamics,
when you look at that in detail, are very different when you
have 100 percent penetration of renewables.
So it is really those cases that we are trying to iron out
from a National Laboratory perspective to make sure that new
systems are bullet proof, so to say, at 100 percent
penetration. And some states are going in that direction.
You've seen, for example, the story of Hawaii, that's where
they're going. There are other countries, including places like
Ireland, that have similar goals. They are at a high
penetration level, but as they go there they find somebody's
technical problems that are challenging down in the details.
So, we think, we believe that more demonstrations that showcase
how to solve those problems, those age problems, are extremely
valuable for the industry.
Senator Cantwell. I think that is so important and should
not be lost about the advent of microgrids that they offer so
much from a test bed perspective, but having been involved in
the early days of internet media software, I can just tell you
that you sit around and talk about, ``how is this going to play
out'' and ``how is that going to play out'', and then all of a
sudden you can just make it live and instantaneously get
feedback from it, from thousands of people was a great asset,
something that we were not able to do before.
So, to me, the microgrid, whether you are talking about
security or you are talking about the technical problems of
integration of renewables, we should be making sure there are
adequate resources there to allow the microgrids to give us
more information. I'm saying just broadly--technology takes up
so much time.
Dr. Ellis. It does.
Senator Cantwell. And you can get us instantaneous feedback
and some real-time information.
I also think, as we start this era, which I guarantee you
is going to end up being one of the most tumultuous eras of
what a utility is today, okay? There is going to be a
transformation of how energy is generated and put on the grid
and delivered back to the home.
I mean, I am pretty sure in 20 years, 25 years, we are all
going to be in the energy business. That is, our home is going
to be in the energy business, and it is going to be generating
something and it is going to be putting it back onto the grid.
Right now in Washington, we have very high electric vehicle
deployment. That is because of our cheap electricity rate and
the interest of the public. So we will end up trying to think
of electric vehicles as battery storage in our communities and
whether it is smart to charge our car at night and then the
next day, charge it back onto the grid at the cheapest kilowatt
rate.
Those kinds of things are going to transform, in the next
couple decades, how utilities are perceived and how they work,
and you are the tip of the spear of that in reality. You are
the tip of the spear because you are doing that right now. The
microgrids are doing that right now.
Microgrids are helping us think about these relationships
between what is a utility and what is the consumer and what are
they developing and what are they putting onto the grid and how
are you going to get it. So Alaska could play a very valuable
role for our country that way.
So I appreciate that.
And Mr. Larson, I don't know that you are claiming the
title renewable beer, but you are getting pretty close.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Larson. Well, I actually have some oblique comments in
regards to that. You know, Juneau's an amazing community.
Alaska is an amazing state. In 1916, February 14th, the first
lake tap in North America was put online and that was a high
alpine lake, tapping the anaerobic area of the lake where
basically no adverse effects were being implemented in the
environment, basically because of necessity those pioneers that
wanted power for the mines. Well, that lake tap and its creek
is still supplying, I think, about 10 percent of Juneau's
power, 101 years later. Juneau is 99.9 percent hydro; however,
hydro is blanketed as a non-renewable resource because of the
impacts having to do with dams and the like in other areas.
This truly is a green power source, and I think we should
start thinking about other types of issues. That's something
that really needs to be addressed. I think the fact that we are
100 percent green electricity, the renewable resource needs to
be recognized, but it's not on a federal level.
Senator Cantwell. Well, I can tell you that BMW builds the
car or parts of a car in our state, the i3, because they market
that car as a totally renewable car. Every aspect of that car
can be renewed in that the electricity that it uses comes from
hydro, so they call it a renewable car.
We are going to see more of this as consumer interest
shifts that way, but you are saying that you had a 60 percent
fuel----
Mr. Larson. Reduction on----
Senator Cantwell. Reduction.
Mr. Larson. For steam generation.
So what we end up doing, we use electricity for much of our
refrigeration, but we also, in the process of making beer,
you're boiling the precursor to essentially remove all the good
stuff from the hops that we get from Yakima.
[Laughter.]
But in that we need fossil fuel, so that's where we're
replacing 60 percent of our fossil fuel use.
But the interesting thing that Mayor Koplin brought up is
one of our electrical uses is the refrigeration. Now our
refrigeration needs aren't on a demand issue. We can delay
certain types of refrigeration initiations based upon the peak
loads of the utilities. I think that's the other point I was
going to maybe mention.
And again, these are very sophisticated, regulatorily
controlled processes, but there are ways for industry to
partner with the local utility. But because of bureaucratic
time and effort----
[Laughter.]
There's just no way. I mean, it's understandably for good
reasons, but I look at our utility's hydro. I mean, they have
interruptible power sources. And historically, the way they
used to do it is they would partner with industry and allow
industry to bear the burden of the exposure in risk and cost
because they were on diesel.
For example, our Kensington mine, which is a very large
mine outside of Juneau, is on interruptible power. So, during
those periods of time when the hydro reservoir is deemed
depleted to the point where maybe they will have to sit there
and go to a diesel backup, they have certain interruptible
users. Green Street mine is one of them. So they will go
offline. They have to go on diesel.
Now, that's an on/off situation. And you know, quite
frankly, a very large user, it makes sense to go through the
bureaucratic labyrinth to be able to get that done and have it
approved by the regulatory agencies.
But in a situation like ours, where there's a peak load and
in our community on specific diurnal cycles that are well known
by the utility, we could have our refrigeration delayed by two
hours, three hours. There isn't that flexibility within that
regulatory compliance for us to be able to partner.
So when you're talking about the dryers, guess what? We
have a one megawatt service and that peak issue that they face,
they fear our spikes.
Right now, we're controlling our refrigeration. We're
basically able to sit there and start to reduce our peak
demands because of the fact that we have higher sophistication
in monitoring our systems. But we're doing it independently. If
we partnered with our utility and could do that economically,
we could reduce significantly our impacts on the utility. You
gang that up, and we're basically doing exactly what's being
proposed here.
Senator Cantwell. So flexibility, a little flexibility, as
well.
Mr. Larson. Yeah.
Senator Cantwell. We will look at that.
Then do I understand, you have patented some of this
technology and it is being deployed across the industry sector
now?
Mr. Larson. Yeah. And the thing is that, it sounds like,
no, no, there's no question. It's situational. Certain
breweries are within maybe a very large metropolis and they
cannot take their spent grain out to the agricultural users.
They have a problem.
There are breweries that are landfilling their spent grain.
Even though that was an option for us, theoretically it wasn't
an option for us, you know, ethically.
I'll tell you what, you know they talk about the cutting
edge of technology? I call it the bleeding, fleeting edge of
technology because it's extraordinarily painful. It's
extraordinarily expensive, but where there's a will, there's a
way.
And you know, you just put down and we sit there and
sometimes look at life cycle cost again. I remember the first
five years of operations if that piece of equipment didn't pay
for itself in one year, we weren't going to do it.
And so, then things changed. Now you can get loans for five
to seven years, commercial loans. So if it pays for itself in
five to seven years, okay, that's a viable approach.
Well, some of this is that the payback circle is much,
much, much longer. But situationally, it could be a non-starter
for a brewery in some remote location or some downtown
municipality, like in Manchester, England.
But it's not just marine technology. There's a lot of types
of materials that are very difficult to burn. Micea, from a
pharmaceutical industry. It's a biohazard and they have a very
difficult time. It has a very strong problem in its combustion.
They tried to incinerate it and they have to use a lot of
fossil fuels to do it. Well, our technology is applicable to
it. And that's just one of dozens of different types of things.
But I go back to, you know, I'm inspired by the history of
our pioneers and I look back at, again, in 1916. What in the
world were they thinking? They sat there and tunneled under
this high alpine lake and tapped it, and then Spanish Champion
in the '60s and then Lake Dorothy. Juneau is hydro.
They've also taken that innovation and applied it to
interruptible power users. They do that on a community basis
for those people who have electrical heat in their homes. They
have programs where they can interrupt their heat use.
I just think it would be great to have even more barley
base so that we can all work together as a community to reduce
our needs. This is one way of reducing our needs, and it is a
cheap, cheap, cheap way.
Senator Cantwell. Yes, it is. Thank you.
Madam Chair, I have more questions.
The Chairman. Oh, I know. We have tons of questions, and I
am sure that everyone sitting here would love to jump in.
You mentioned a little bit, Geoff, on the investment side.
We talk a lot back in Washington, DC, about this ``Valley of
Death,'' where you have the innovation that is going on in our
national labs, in our universities, in entities like ACEP here
and then you have the problem of getting to commercialization
and actually seeing that translate into viable activity and
action.
I know that there are probably a few people here in the
audience that are actually interested in the investment end of
things.
As a state, right now, our Alaska Renewable Energy Fund, as
I believe, has no money in it. We have had opportunities for
the state and various programs to help facilitate some of the
investment.
At the federal level there are, obviously, grant
opportunities to help build things out, but so much of what we
see that is lost between the good idea and getting into play so
that there is benefit shared, is kind of in this valley where
it is just not enough to allow for the public-private
partnership to move forward so that you have this level of
investment.
I appreciate what you said, Meera, that while they need a
level of testing, and Alaska can be this great incubator for
good ideas, we cannot be a test bed just for the purpose of
being a test bed because we need to have these applications
street ready, because if they are not you have communities that
are in the dark and in the cold.
So how do we do a better job, again, with the partnerships
that must take place at a time when the state is facing
financial issues? From the federal perspective, we have some
real serious budget constraints that will be upon us as we are
moving forward in this next budget for 2018. How can we be most
helpful at the federal level, then, to help move good ideas
from the incubator to commercialization in a manner that is
going to be helpful?
Geoff, you speak about the history over 30 years of what
you were able to do, you have to have your investors that
believe in where we are with this. How are we making it happen
in Alaska? What can we be doing better at the federal level to
help facilitate that and whether it is specific programs that
we should be looking at, give us that information, but help me
out here in terms of how we make sure that the good ideas that
we talk about now do not get lost in this so-called ``Valley of
Death?''
Ms. Kohler. And I'll just touch on it real quickly.
All too often we have federal agencies, like DOE and
others, that basically helicopter in and they tell us what
wonderful things they're going to do for us and how they're
going to transform our world and then they leave----
The Chairman. They need to be listening to you.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Kohler. They do. We need to be involved. They need to
involve us in coming up with solutions. I think that Sandia's
presence here is wonderful. We need the national labs to be
major players. I think ONR has just been a fabulously receptive
resource.
But we do also have, for example, the NAI Commission and
the High Energy Cost Rent Program and others like that, that
have fostered innovation and both need to be continued.
The Chairman. Great.
Ms. Holdmann. I'll kind of jump in from where Meera started
there.
I think one of the things that I believe that we can look
at is how we're using existing federal resources and, kind of,
use them a little bit more wisely. Like Meera was saying that a
lot of times we have folks from the Federal Government, from
labs that are, kind of, helicoptering in, I'll use her words.
and providing technical assistance for our communities.
But it's like what Clay was mentioning with NREL when he
pointed out that here the Eyak Tribe could demonstrate best
practices in some ways. I think enabling Alaskans to really be
providing that technical assistance for our communities that
are struggling a little bit more makes a lot of sense rather
than having federal resources providing that technical
assistance.
And then where we really need technical assistance is to
the, kind of, higher functioning people that are looking at
those next generation kind of things. I would love to have
folks from Sandia come and embed with ACEP and work with us and
our utilities on specific solutions.
That would be such a wonderful use of federal resources
that we can learn from one another, that we're really
benefiting from working together on these solutions rather than
having labs that are just going into communities and providing
technical assistance in ways where they don't understand the
complexities of what is happening in Alaska. It winds up being
that people, like me and Meera and Clay, wind up playing
interference a lot of times with some of the things that are
then proposed or suggested.
I think also, earlier involvement is important. And since
we're talking specifically about innovation here, what I have
really found, I've been really involved in this and thought
about it a lot, been involved in it at numerous levels. And we
need practitioners involved at an earlier level in the
technology development process. I think that's really
important.
If you have folks like Meera that understand how things
work at the end of the day, working more closely with the
companies that are at an early stage of technology development,
you're going to have a much better outcome in the end.
We have this laboratory and we test the things at the
utility for people. We have a full power fault simulator so we
can simulate. We can actually not just simulate, we can do a
full test at full power levels to make sure that we can see how
the equipment responds.
But why those guys that come in to see these new
technologies, they never thought about how to actually
integrate their technology into the system. They have not put
any thought into that. They just figured that's going to happen
at the end of the day, no problem.
But actually, if they thought about it at an earlier point,
it would have saved a lot of hiccups along the way. So getting
us Alaskans more involved early on in this technology
development team, because it's not just one ``Valley of
Death,'' it's multiple ``Valleys of Death'' that, I think,
happen. We've got to get practitioners involved at an earlier
level to make better decisions as that's going along and have
immediate partners that you can have engaged, as you're, kind
of, trying to mature the technology.
The Chairman. Great.
Ms. Kohler. And you know, real quickly.
One of the challenges that we run into is federal officials
from various different departments coming in and trying to
direct interaction with communities where you basically wind up
being competition with the utility that's struggling to provide
the type of affordable service that they demand. And then you
wind up with cost increases a lot. So that needs to be taken a
look at. Sorry.
The Chairman. Great, no, I appreciate that.
Dr. Ellis?
Dr. Ellis. I just wanted to briefly, I agree, first of all
with the group so far on this area.
Coming from a National Laboratory, you know, my perspective
is that we could do better in terms of information sharing
among the National Laboratories, among the institutions that
work in this area. I think that promoting an easier way to
share information through some sort of a consortium in this
area would be really, really good.
There's also something that we could do, I believe, a
little bit better from the standpoint of National Laboratories
to make it easier to partner with the private sector with
companies that are developing, as you call it, technologies
that are in the early stage.
We are there to serve the country, the nation, but the way
that the National Laboratories work sometimes make it a little
bit difficult, I think, for, particularly, smaller companies to
partner with us.
So we could use a little bit of help, you know, maybe
reviewing those processes or what are the available options for
the national laboratories to really support the kind of
partnership like, for example, the MHK of folks that developed
some of the imaginative technologies here.
I'd also like to say that we need to think of some of these
challenges in the long-term. I don't like this idea of
parachuting into communities and saying you're going to save
somebody or whatever and then disappear.
Some of these things actually take time, take a concerted
effort over time. And I think that thinking about programs that
are long-term, stable and that have goals that need to be
pursued hand-in-hand with the local stakeholders is something
that we could potentially do better, to define those kinds of
longer-term efforts.
And we do that, I think, very well for science and
technology development, things like oh, I don't know, codings
and you know, biofuels and things like that, but when it comes
to systems integration, it just seems like a page of that
partnership is such that they're volatile, you know, a one year
project and then it's gone. And so, I would love to see more of
this, sort of, longer-term projects that have us working hand-
in-hand.
The Chairman. Integration is the key.
Geoff? Clay?
Mr. Koplin. Go ahead, Geoff.
Mr. Larson. Okay.
Innovation gets back to the bleeding edge of technology.
Innovation is very painful, and small purveyors have different
ideas and then can implement them.
I think if there's a way that some of the risk on a
financial basis that could be defrayed would be great. I'll
give an example that we have. We put in a mash filter press
which is, kind of, a unique technology. No craft brewery in the
U.S. uses it. And what it is, it's a press that actually uses
much less water in the manufacturing of that precursor of beer
wort. But the press itself ends up yielding a very dry cake at
the end of it. We end up using six percent less malt to get the
same amount of beer. And well, the first year we reduced our
water usage by two million gallons of water. We're one of the
lowest water users per gallon of beer in the United States. In
fact, we were cited for best practices for a brewery that uses
a resource to reduce your water usage.
But how does this affect energy? Well, our lack of
discharge of that five percent of the sugars because of the way
we processed, does not go down the drain. That less water does
not go to our utility. The power savings, not only internally
because we use less water, we have to heat less water up. The
power savings of our utility was strategically motivating for
us to put this piece of equipment in. We are the first one in
the United States to put one in for the craft sector. Now there
are over two dozen small breweries that are using the same
technology. Sometimes you have to risk it. Well, we risked it
for a lot of reasons.
We're in a small community. Our impacts on our utilities
are strategically important. Without the water, we ain't making
beer and without the wastewater treatment, we're not making
beer. So it's a collaborative effort in reality and ethically.
If there's a way to be able to identify that sort of risk
in technology, it can be magnified in its result. We proved to
others we can make international award winning beers. They
didn't fear putting in a mash filter press. And now----
The Chairman. Clay?
Mr. Koplin. You know, Lewis and Clark, before they headed
West, were classically trained for almost 10 years in
everything biology. They were renaissance men, you know, by
choice. They needed to know how all the tools worked.
They were doctors, had the best medical technology,
literally. They became experts at just about everything they
could. But they took Indian guides with them starting from the
East Coast all the way back, and that's how they crossed the
``Valley of Death'' and the rivers and the mountains and the
terrain and the poisons and the unknowns.
That's how they got to their destination. It saved their
lives several times having a cultural guide who understood the
cultures, even though they weren't maybe directly related to
the Indian cultures they crossed all the way West into
Washington.
It's amazing to me that some of the most amazing innovators
and technologists are right here in our state, four, five, six
hundred years ago and back for thousands of years, lived on the
Arctic Slope. I mean, think of the resource limitations there
to have a sustainable society.
Anyways, we need to get back to the future and figure out
whether we can't capture some of those processes and what not.
I mean, I know you wanted to have a native represented on the
panel today and that got a little tangled up, but they are some
of our strongest partners.
But we can be those tour guides for the national labs.
They've got that robust technology and all of the best state-
of-the-art equipment, but we can bridge that cultural gap and
the real need on the ground and I hope things happen.
We're just so used to trying. I laugh at Meera's hydrogen
example because I literally took a mason jar filled with water
and baking soda and ran an electric loop off the ignition of
the car and made a hydrogen generator that we were plumbing
into the air intake on our vehicles because we wanted to try it
on our trucks first.
We were at it for several months and looked at our mileage
and everything. We had a 15 percent gain, until we realized the
oxygen sensor was automatically compensating and burning more
fuel to try to make up for it.
[Laughter.]
We thought why are we getting 15 percent gain and it turns
out we were just driving more carefully in accelerating.
But that's how innovation happens, right? We learned a way
to save 15 percent but the hydrogen thing, that's even better.
[Laughter.]
So, and that's what we really want to do, and our investors
are our members. It's the Grey's and the fishermen that pay us
huge electric bills.
We have to give a return on investment, and that happens by
better utilizing the resources we already have, getting more
out of our hydro projects. We spend more in hydroelectricity,
probably, in some years than we use in diesel fuel. So that's
why it's a survival class. It isn't just a laboratory concept.
If we can get together early on in these processes and work
with the labs, as Gwen was suggesting, the whole journey gets
much more efficient and the destination ends up being a lot
more productive.
The Chairman. Well said. I would say that Alaskans have a
Ph.D. in living.
[Laughter.]
And do not ever underestimate what it is that we are able
to learn and then to share as we facilitate innovation.
We are going to try to wrap this hearing by noon.
Senator Cantwell, why don't you take the last 10 minutes
for your series of questions here?
Senator Cantwell. Okay.
Well, thank you, Madam Chair, and I again so appreciate the
panel.
I wanted to ask Gwen about this cold climate research, kind
of tying in a little bit of yesterday and a little bit of
today.
Where are we with buildings and building materials and the
science and integration and using that to helping us with
savings on the grid?
Ms. Holdmann. Yes.
Senator Cantwell. And what else do we need to do to help be
supportive from a federal perspective in the research of the
Alaska hub?
Ms. Holdmann. Right.
Yeah, I think, you know, each region and we all have many
different kinds of climate in the United States in different
regions, from pretty tropical, hot areas, to very, very cold
areas in the Arctic.
And so, I think the issue around really locally appropriate
housing that is going to both take advantage of the kinds of
energy needs, locally, whether that's cooling or heating, in
addition to, sort of, the way that people use their home
structures, like the way people in our communities they really
use their homes for social purposes. It has an important
social, sort of, aspect to it.
So having small rooms and small spaces doesn't always work
as appropriate for supporting the culture in our communities.
Really coming up with strategies in this northern shelter
program that the Cold Climate Housing Research Center has
developed is important. It is a nonprofit. That is, a private
nonprofit. We work with them really closely because we're more
on the grid scale, community scale. They're doing the built
environment.
And so, making sure that we're looking at that really
holistically and thinking across that entire spectrum, I think,
is really important. And these are places where what they're
doing is really critical. But, as the state has less resources,
those are programs that are really in danger of really losing
steam and how can we really try to find more federal
partnerships to try to shore up some of these really
significant areas of expertise that have been developed?
Our Mayor in Fairbanks where the Cold Climate Housing
Research Center and the Alaska Center for Energy and Power are
housed, has a net zero home in a very cold climate that's
completely off-grid. Not because he wants to be off-grid, but
because there is no grid where his house is, where our Mayor's
home is.
Fairbanks prefers its hot bed for research and innovation,
in a way, that is sort of partnering across the state, but we
really need to keep in mind the housing component to it. I
think it's really important to be thinking about things like
insulation and weatherization.
Senator Cantwell. Well, one of the reasons the legislation
that Senator Murkowski and I have supported is the next step we
think is it is really targeting smart buildings. Forty percent
of our energy use is in buildings and these facilities, I
equated, to the next phase of efficiency given the fuel
efficiency in automobiles drove the last chapter over the last
10 to 15 years. This next chapter is about getting that
efficiency out of the building side to reduce that 40 percent.
What else do we need to do to help since we are not really
a federal partner right now on the hub? What else do we need to
do to help look at those solutions that are being deployed
here?
Ms. Holdmann. I think a lot of things that have been, that
you are already paying attention to, I think both of you are
doing an excellent job and--on where we need to be going and
really, kind of, putting together this framework or this
roadmap.
I think the important thing is to, kind of, pull Alaska
into these solutions because these things like demand response,
all the buzz words that we are talking about at the national
level, a lot of these things are already being done. The
utilities figured out how to sort this out with customers.
We have such small utilities here. How many utilities, like
140 in Alaska or some crazy number that Meera was quoting the
other day. You know, they're very willing to push the envelope
and come up with new strategies. So getting Alaska to be part
of that is important. We are a microgrid in this state, this is
what we're doing here and it's relevant to this national
picture. We've done a lot.
Senator Cantwell. Dr. Ellis, do you have a comment on that?
Dr. Ellis. Just a quick comment here.
We have been talking today about the issues surrounding
energy. For us, at Sandia labs the Arctic also represents a
whole lot of other challenges. There is a lot going on in terms
of changing climate in the North here where it's affecting
communities. It is a question of national security. And in
other cases, energy is part of a much larger set of issues that
we have to deal with here.
I wanted to point that out because, you know, we have been,
Sandia has been working in this area for a very long time in
terms of climate modeling, doing measurements, tracking things
like ice movements and things like that. And it is an important
aspect of what we do. And I think really, in terms of what can
be done from a federal standpoint to see some of this
opportunities flourish, it is very critical.
I would challenge, I think, all of us to find ways to
connect some of these initiatives. I know that the Department
of Defense, for example, has a high interest in the region as
well. You know, I heard from Gwen and others that they are
actually funding some of the work in energy you're doing here
in the state.
I think that, perhaps, there are more synergies that we can
see or that have come to the surface that we need to explore.
Let me take one second only to, I meant to earlier, make a
comment about your question about whether or not in definition
of microgrids really covers remote communities. So that's an
issue that a DOE program manager has discussed before with his
team of laboratories that are working in this space. You know,
I think as a laboratory team we're all of the opinion that the
definition isn't really meant to exclude remote communities. In
fact, some of the projects that are being funded through these
microgrid R&D programs are specifically targeting remote
communities.
For example, the Island of Skagul, near the Aleutians is
one of seven major projects to try to understand what we can do
from the standpoint of better controls, you know, better ways
of managing microgrids that are isolated with a lot of
renewable resources. That's one of those projects.
We're also working on new design methodologies and tools
for upgrading microgrids. Both, by the way, AC and DC
microgrids. And those are also targeting results. Just wanted
to make it clear.
Can we do more? Absolutely. But, you know, we're all in
that, sort of a constrained resource sort of a situation.
I'm actually leaving here energized with the opportunities
to, not just from a technical standpoint that are here in
Alaska, but, you know, understanding that people here really
want to, out of necessity and otherwise, make a difference. I
think this is a great place to move things forward.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you.
I know we are out of time, Madam Chair, but I just wanted
to respond to the Mayor.
When Lewis and Clark got out to the mouth of the Columbia
River, they got waylaid because of the treacherous nature of
the mouth of the river. In fact, there is a plate there
commemorating it called ``Dismal Nitch'' which kind of gives
you an idea of how dismal it was.
[Laughter.]
They were without food and without a proper canoe to meet
those headwaters, and the local tribe showed up to show them
where to get food and how to build a more sturdy canoe.
The reason I am telling this story is because in Clark's
journal he writes that nowhere, anywhere in America did he ever
see a tribe so influenced by women than he had when he came to
the Pacific Northwest.
[Laughter.]
So I think, Senator Murkowski, it is in our DNA that----
[Laughter.]
That this region of the world likes to be represented in
the collaborative fashion that women bring to the table.
I thank everybody here for their participation in today's
forum. We will take these ideas back and try to work in a
collaborative fashion for the very applicable innovation that
is here in Alaska.
Thank you for your great contributions.
The Chairman. Well, Senator Cantwell, I would like to thank
you.
I do have to say that as I listened to each of our
witnesses this morning, I cannot help but just feel so proud as
an Alaskan. I do think that we recognize that we have a great
deal to offer, but it is not just talking about it on paper. We
are living it. We are doing it. We are making it happen. And we
are capturing the attention of the rest of the country and the
rest of the world.
And so, for those that have been dogged in their efforts
for decades to build a business where you are just making beer,
but what you are doing as you are making beer is you are
allowing others to believe in some things that many had just
said were not possible.
I think we recognize that for Alaska's future going forward
we have to continue the level of innovation. We have to develop
a level of resilience and almost autonomy, if you will, within
our own communities.
But I think that it clearly brings about a level of
challenge that stretches the mind and allows us to not only
make good things happen within our communities, but then how we
share that with the rest of the country, how we share it with
the world.
I firmly believe that so much of what we see happens here
in the energy space can be replicated around the globe because
we are allowing that innovation to be brought down to a smaller
scale that there is room to move up and we are demonstrating it
here on the ground with great minds and great people leading to
great innovation.
It is not very often that during a Committee hearing I
actually present a gift but you are a guest in our community. I
know the Mayor has a jar of salmon there that I will allow him
to present. I wanted to make sure that you didn't leave town
without a gift from Copper River Fleece.
[Laughter.]
When you come to Cordova you must leave adorned with some
aspect of something from Copper River Fleece.
So, from those of us here, we thank you for your
contribution on energy, but thank you for being here to learn
from some great Alaskans about our opportunities.
Mayor, it is your town. I will allow you the final word, if
you will.
Mr. Koplin. Well, thank you, Senators, for your leadership
and what you're doing for energy and energy policies in this
country and holding these kinds of hearings and reaching out
and helping us bridge that gap as communities, as a state, as a
region, the Pacific Northwest and as a country and ultimately
as the world. We do have a lot to share.
Gwen and I were talking last night about deploying smart
grid technologies and we both worked lately with some
Australian communities that are way ahead of us and we're
thinking we need to go there and work with them.
That would be really tragic. We have those technical
resources here. We would much rather be working with our own
technical labs, but there's so many connections here.
Avista, now the electric utility for Juneau, was my path to
call my friend, Tim McCloud, that manages that utility and say,
hey, they're looking at this great battery opportunity down in
Avista or down in Pullman, Washington, that I'd like to look at
and it's right there at Schweitzer Engineering labs that make
the relays that help keep the lights on all the time.
So there are all these little connections, and I think
that's part of what we do, too, is we communicate well.
So let's keep the conversation going.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Cantwell, the last thing I am going
to leave you with is a pull-out from the Alaska dispatch from
last week. The article is, ``What Alaska can teach the world
about renewable energy.''
We are making it happen here every day.
With that, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your
contribution and for those who have stayed throughout the
morning, we greatly appreciate it.
The Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
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