2022 Shultz Energy Fellowships: Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP): Railbelt Decarbonization
Regional-, state-, and city-level efforts are essential in our fight against climate change, especially in the field of energy. Stanford University is committed to helping by integrating its students into energy and climate ecosystems in the West through the Shultz Energy Fellowships program, an energy-related summer fellowship program for undergraduate and graduate students. You will be one of two Stanford students placed at ACEP based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Named in honor of former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, one of the most widely admired American public servants of the past half-century, the program offers a suite of paid, energy-related public service fellowships for Stanford students in California, Colorado, Utah, and Hawaii during the summer.
The fellowships run from Monday, June 20, 2022 to Friday, August 26, 2022.
Organization/Agency mission or role in state government
The Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) is an applied energy research program based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. ACEP provides leadership in developing energy systems for islanded, non-integrated electric grids and their associated oil-based heating systems.
Alaska’s Railbelt transmission system (Railbelt) is the largest electrical grid in Alaska serving about 800 MW of load from Homer, AK to Fairbanks, AK. Significant renewable energy integration modeling and studies have been performed on the electrical grids in the contiguous United States. In contrast, Alaska’s Railbelt is a highly understudied system with significant potential for renewable energy integration.
Prior to the formation of the Railbelt, several isolated microgrids run by member-owned cooperative utilities served the load centers of this region. As it became economically advantageous, these utilities interconnected with transmission lines. However, to this day, the electric utilities of the Railbelt have largely operated independently of each other due to lack of North American Electric Reliability Cooperation (NERC) jurisdiction in the region, each reliably operating and maintaining its own generation, transmission, and distribution equipment despite the small size of each utility (<450 MW peak load per utility) with limited market structure.
The Railbelt currently relies primarily on natural gas, coal, and hydro generation, which has historically maintained the critical reliability necessary during the winter peak load. However, Railbelt utilities have issued requests for proposals for renewable energy installations, have pending energy storage installations, and have instituted carbon reduction studies that may dramatically shift their generation profile.
Alaska’s Railbelt electric grid is particularly unique because there is no redundancy for its two major interties, the Alaska intertie connecting the Matanuska Susitna Valley and Fairbanks and the Kenai intertie connecting the Anchorage area with the Kenai peninsula. This severely limits the amount of power transfer between these regions and utilities. Due to this history and structure of the system, the Railbelt uniquely functions as loosely interconnected microgrids. The Railbelt transmission system is the only grid system in the United States which currently is structured as loosely interconnected microgrids, other grids and islanded systems have much greater interconnection.
Assignment
A Shultz Energy Fellow will perform the planning and operational power modeling necessary to evaluate various scenarios for decarbonization pathways for the Railbelt region of Alaska, incorporating transmission power system analysis and/or operational dispatch modeling. The Alaska state government passed the Alaska Senate Bill 123, which mandates the formation of an Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) which will perform an integrated resource plan, institute and enforce reliability standards, and create a cost sharing mechanism for projects with Railbelt-wide benefits. The findings of this study will be valuable to the pending ERO and associated stakeholders as they make decisions about the future of the Railbelt. Additionally, the outcomes of this work can directly assist the Railbelt utilities with their plans for renewable energy integration in the system and how that generation can aid the entire Railbelt system as the ERO is established.
Potential mentor(s)
- Dr. Phylicia Cicilio, Research Assistant Professor at ACEP, Power Systems Integration team
- Dr. Steve Colt, Research Professor of Energy Economics and Policy at ACEP
Desired Skills and Background:
- Power systems modeling or energy economics
- Electrical engineering or economics
- Optimization
- Differential equations
All Shultz fellows must be enrolled in the spring quarter before their fellowship.
All Shultz fellows must take a one-unit spring workshop course, 'Energy Policy in California and the West' taught by Professor Bruce Cain that will provide an in-depth analysis of the role of California state agencies, the Western Interstate Energy Board, and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council in driving energy policy development, technology innovation, and market structures. Course number is CEE 263G / POLISCI 73 / PUBLPOL 73 / ENERGY 73. Schedule: Wednesdays from 9:45 am - 10:45 am (Shriram Ctr BioChemE 108).
Please note that this opportunity is for graduate students. Interested undergraduates can apply for the Shultz Energy Fellowships program via SIG.