325 thousand to cut the diesel

and the tool they are building to do it is artificial intelligence.

The Department of Energy just put 325 thousand dollars into a lab at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. With its partners, the whole project runs about seven hundred twenty five thousand.

The problem is one most of us never think about. A lot of small Alaska communities are not wired into anything. There is no bigger grid to lean on when demand spikes.

The professor running it said it this way. They are completely isolated.

So the generators run on diesel, and guessing wrong about how much power tonight needs means burning more of it than you had to.

The software is meant to forecast that demand ahead of time, cut the diesel, and keep the lights steadier.

Phase one starts October 1st and runs nine months. The utility partner is Cordova Electric Cooperative, working alongside a Colorado university and a national lab.

Phase two needs roughly seven million more dollars. If they find it, the plan puts small data centers, about a hundred kilowatts each, directly inside those village power systems.

A data center small enough to sit in one village, running on the same power system it is there to help balance.