Honor the Past. Be the Future.

High Resolution Home Fuel Usage in Rural Alaska Using the Pump Monitor Apparatus

Date:

Friday, October 5, 2018

Room/Location:

Room 3

Time:

10:30 am to 10:50 am

Session Track(s):

Research: Energy

The majority of households in rural Alaska depend on diesel fuel to heat their homes. Homeowners and researchers currently suffer from a lack of a historical record of fuel consumption, limited understanding of home heating patterns on a daily and monthly basis, and incomplete documentation of community heat loads. Using current off-the-shelf components, students with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power created a fuel meter to collect high-resolution fuel usage data. Treating individual home fuel consumption as a proxy for residential heat loads, we generated a community dataset of heating patterns over a one-year period. This dataset will be used to develop methods to predict future usage and reduce fuel consumption for homeowners.

Speaker(s)

Baxter Bond

Yup'ik

Student

University of Alaska Fairbanks

Baxter is from Tununak, Alaska, a small village on the southwestern coast. He is a mechanical engineering student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and has a degree in his heritage language, Yup'ik, also from UAF. He has taught several native language and native dance classes while at UAF. As an engineer, he works at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power developing a fuel usage meter for use in rural Alaska. The meter, called the PuMA, can be used to reduce heating costs by optimizing fuel usage. Baxter also has plans to eventually pursue a master's degree in computational linguistics

Alana Vilagi

Student

University of Alaska Fairbanks

Alana has worked on a diverse range of projects with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, from studying the effects of snow accumulation on solar panels to developing community heat load data sets. She is currently pursuing her master's degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Alana dreams of one day becoming a Sourdough, and loves to cross-country ski, travel, hike, and haul water when she's not doing research.