Photo: John Locher/AP
The Alaskan village of Galena is shifting to clean energy in an effort to reduce its reliance on expensive, imported diesel. Its nearly completed solar farm, along with an existing biomass plant, will protect its 400 residents from blackouts during extreme weather while diversifying its energy sources and providing job opportunities for locals, says Tim Kalke, general manager of Sustainable Energy for Galena Alaska, the nonprofit that will operate it. The village has one of the state's first large-scale biomass plants, where since 2016, locally harvested trees shredded into wood chips fuel a large boiler plant on the SEGA campus, offsetting about 380,000 liters of diesel annually. That has created a local workforce and a job base the village never used to have. The solar array will allow Galena to shut off the diesel operation between 800 to 1,000 hours a year, totaling about 380,000 liters.
|
|
More:
