View from Matanuska Experiment Farm
The University of Alaska is a land grant system, established first in Fairbanks in 1917. Today, the University of Alaska owns and manages about 183,000 acres of land, of which only 13,000 are designated for educational purposes. The 170,000 acres designated as investment property generate revunue to directly support the UA system. At present, the land grant earnings of the University of Alaska system are mostly from land and timber sales, with a small amount from oil and gas leases. The UA Land Management head office is located near the UAA campus in midtown Anchorage.
The SES seeks to survey the renewable energy potential on lands owned by the University of Alaska system. SES hopes that renewable energy development on UA-owned land will help diversify and enhance the university's future revenue stream. Potential wind energy and hydroelectric sites, in addition to biomass from wood and animal waste, are known to exist on UA-owned lands.
Matanuska Experiment Farm Wind Project
The UA-owned research farm in the Palmer area, officially called the Matanuska Experiment Farm, offers possible wind and biomass energy potential. This farm was started by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1906, and was transferred to the university in 1931. The farm is a historic landmark, because in the early 1930s it helped lay the basis for the "New Deal colonization" of poor midwestern farmers in the surrounding region. The Matanuska Experiment Farm is part of the Alaska Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (AFES) that is administered by the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences.
After initial scoping during the late spring of 2005, SES members helped install a "met" (wind and meteorological instrument tower) on October 29, 2005. For a one year period, the met tower will collect wind data in order to determine if the farm would be an economic location for wind energy production.
Raising the met tower
Looking up at installed met tower
Mia Devine, wind technology expert from the Alaska Energy Authority, programs the data-collection system