Green as a National Park
Will and I were lucky enough to travel to Alaska last month with his family and visit several amazing national parks. Denali was probably the coolest (grizzly bears! caribou! huge mountains!) but I also was super impressed by the Kenai Fjords National Park with its coastal glaciers. It’s pretty humbling being next to a giant river of ice and to watch an immense chunk break off with a loud “CRACK” and fall into the ocean. Amazing.
While we loved the wildlife and the beautiful landscapes, we also enjoyed seeing all the ways the parks strive to be green, including quite a few renewable energy technologies. It seemed like every building (even the outlying bathroom structures) had a solar panel on it. Eielson Visitor Center, deep into the tundra of Denali National Park and with spectacular views of Mt McKinley, was the most impressive and is a LEED platinum building. It’s essentially built into a hill with tundra plants growing on the roof to help it blend even further into the landscape. One of their challenges (and motivations) is that there is no electric grid available 66 miles into the park. So, the building uses several different energy sources (solar panels, hydroelectric generator in a nearby stream, and small propane generator) and was designed for maximal passive heating and lighting. One advantage they have is that the center is only open for four summer months (June - September) because it is snowed in the rest of the year.
We happened to visit on the summer solstice, when the official sunrise was at 3:45 AM and official sunset was at 12:21 AM the next day (a 20 hour 36 minute day) but it never got truly dark - just dusk-like. You can generate a lot of electricity from solar panels on a sunny day in that part of the world! However, they also have a lot of cloudy days so it has been an experiment to see how solar electricity and solar hot water work for the center. I think it’s awesome that the parks are able to try out different technologies and do the best they can to have a minimal impact on some of the best natural landscapes in our country.
In Kenai Fjords, I snapped a quick picture of an electric car driven by the rangers. I expect it makes a lot of sense for traveling between their two visitor centers that are about fifteen miles apart over flat paved roads (as opposed to driving through the backcountry). We are still intrigued by the idea of getting an electric car for our household since so much of the driving we do is short distances on city streets with low speed limits. However, it doesn’t look like it will bubble up to the top of the priority list anytime soon. I guess we’ll let the parks work out all the kinks and then we’ll adopt the refined version.
The good folks at 
He also measured a few other spots in our yard so we could think about doing a pole-mounted solar panel. You could argue that the pole-mounted systems are a little on the ugly side but they are very practical in terms of maintenance - no climbing on the roof, no trying to patch the roof under the solar panels - and they are great for houses that have a shaded roof but sunny yard. We are leaning in that direction simply because our roof is 20 years old and will need to be replaced well before the solar panels. Alex actually has his panel (shown at right) configured so he can move it around during the day to maximize its exposure to direct sunlight and therefore maximize electrical generation. He is the first to admit that is way too hardcore for most people but he is a tinkerer and enjoys fiddling. Most people just retilt their panels twice a year at each solstice. At the spring solstice, the panel is tilted closer to horizontal since the sun is higher in the sky during the summer. At the fall solstice, the panel is tilted more vertical since the sun is low in the sky during the winter.
