**Title**: Energy in the North - Roderick Phillip
**Date**: August 28, 2024
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Roderick Phillip


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[Roderick Phillip] So we should be near 100% renewable by the time we complete our project.

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[Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, we speak with Roderick Philip, manager for Purvurnaq Power Company, the power utility in Kongiganak on Alaska's Kuskokwim Delta.

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While, Kongiganak is a traditional Yup'ik community of just over 500 residents. It also boasts a pretty innovative renewable energy microgrid and home heating system. Rod emphasized what's important to his community.

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[Roderick Phillip] 90% of our community relies on subsistence. Seals, walrus, moose, birds, fishing.

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[Amanda Byrd] You not only harvest your food from the land, you get your energy from there too.

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[Roderick Phillip] We have 595 kilowatt wind turbines, a battery bank and, 50 electric thermal stoves. And in the near future, a solar farm.

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[Amanda Byrd] How big is your solar farm going to be?

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[Roderick Phillip] a total of 300 kilowatt of solar.

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[Amanda Byrd] With over 500 people and a pretty large school, you must have a decent sized baseload demand.

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[Roderick Phillip] Our current load is a maximum of 250 kilowatt in the wintertime. Average demand is in the summer is 150.

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[Amanda Byrd] So you have significantly more renewables in Kongiganak than is needed to run the base load of the community.

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[Roderick Phillip] Yes. The reason why is because we have the electric thermal stoves. And we're also planning to get the one megawatt battery bank. So we should be near 100% renewable by the time we complete our project.

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[Amanda Byrd
An electric thermal stove looks like a Tokyo stove, but it's filled with ceramic bricks with a copper wire running through them. A radio signal from the power plant communicates with the stoves in the homes four times a second. And when the wind is blowing, as it does in the winter, the excess electricity generated from those wind turbines gets sent to charge or heat the bricks producing up to 20,000 BTUs an hour, offsetting the oil fired heaters inside the homes. The electricity for the heating of the bricks is sold to the residents for $0.10 a kilowatt hour, or the equivalent of $3 per gallon of heating fuel.

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[Roderick Phillip] Residential homes require more heat in the winter time is when it is windy and when it's cold.

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[Amanda Byrd] When it's windy, the wind turbines and battery storage system can produce enough electricity to power the community without burning diesel fuel for up to a week at a time. This is an enormous cost savings to the community and its residents. And this was not only Kongiganak that came up with this idea you worked with Intelligent Energy Systems.

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[Roderick Phillip] We've been working with Dennis Meiners since 2005. We got the wind thermal storage project back in 2008. We commissioned our wind turbines and they've in been in operation since the end of 2012 and our battery bank was in operation in 2018.

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[Amanda Brrd]
That was really smart to harness more wind power for the microgrid than what was needed to meet the baseload demand and to push the rest into the homes

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[Roderick Phillip] The overall goal was for our renewable projects was to tackle both aspects of energy, electricity and heating, which takes about half of our residents income. The third aspect of energy that is not recognized is food. That is where all the fuel savings they get from heating their home goes to gasoline to put more food on the table.

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[Amanda Byrd]
Roderick Phillip is a manager of Purvurnaq Power Company. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power at ÐÔÓûÉç. Find more stories and information about ACEP at uaf.edu/acep.