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NANA Regional Corporation (NRC, or NANA) was formed as an Alaska Native Corporation (ANC) pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. Our lands cover 39,000 square miles of the Northwest Arctic region of Alaska (Appendix A, Maps and Figures). We partner closely with the Northwest Arctic Borough (NAB) and our 11 remote communities on numerous projects and activities, especially around clean energy initiatives that improve quality of life and help to reduce extremely high energy costs experienced by the communities in our region. Collectively, the regional partnership has developed numerous successful solar, wind, biomass, and energy storage, distribution upgrade, and efficiency projects.<
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The Department of Energy-Office of Indian Energy (DOE-OIE) awarded NRC a $1 million Tribal Deployment Grant to install solar photovoltaic (PV) in three of the 11 NRC communities: Buckland, Deering, and Kotzebue
with an obligation for an additional $1 million in non-federal cost share from NANA and/or the other project participants. For this project, NRC worked directly with the three stand-alone electric utilities that serve Buckland, Deering, and Kotzebue.<
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The characteristics of the three participating communities are vastly different and illustrate the diversity across our region. Deering is an extremely small community of about 150 residents, whereas Kotzebue is by far the largest in our region with a population of almost 3,300 (Appendix B, Community Energy Profiles)
Deering and Kotzebue are coastal communities, while Buckland?s approximately 500 residents live over 15 miles inland on the Buckland River, which substantially impacts subsistence opportunities and activities as well as the cost and availability of imported commodities such as diesel fuel. However, by virtue of all three communities owning and operating their own electric utilities, they share at least one thing in common: all have a history of innovation in their pursuit of alternative and renewable energy projects, including wind energy, heat recovery, and small-scale solar on community water plants.<
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All three projects were successful and groundbreaking in various ways. The Buckland solar PV system, installed in 2018 at about 45 kW and using BoxPower?s unique racking design on shipping containers and SMA inverters, became the first solar-wind-battery-diesel hybrid system to perform in diesels-off mode for substantial amounts of time. The Deering solar PV system, installed in 2019 at about 48.5 kW, used similar equipment but demonstrated significant cost savings by combining inverters, improved communications with ABB microgrid control technology, and reduced anchoring logistics and material requirements. Deering is also performing in diesels-off mode for hundreds of hours annually. The Kotzebue solar PV system, installed in 2020 at 576 kW, is the largest solar PV array in rural Alaska and is demonstrating high performance in replacing old, non-performing wind assets using the same communication lines and inverter housing that was originally established for older wind turbines. Kotzebue also successfully demonstrated the use of bi-facial solar PV panels to further increase performance with no cost additions. Kotzebue is not yet performing in diesels-off mode simply because the load is too high relative to their renewable energy generation and energy storage assets, but this solar PV array meaningfully advanced their march toward diesels-off and they continue to add renewable generation and storage. Combined, these three systems have firmly demonstrated solar PV?s role in the Northwest Arctic?s renewable energy landscape. This DOE Tribal Deployment grant has also helped to create the template for future solar deployments in the region and across the state as we now see tremendous proliferation in the number and size of these projects, including Shungnak at 225 kW and Noatak at about 275 kW.<
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