Alaska Affordable Energy Model

The Alaska Affordable Energy Model (AAEM) is a model designed by the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA) and built by the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ (UAF) Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA). The goal of the AAEM is to provide Alaska with a community energy model and project evaluation tool. It uses community and regional energy data, fuel data, and socio-economic data to:

• estimate and forecast heating and electricity consumption by sector,
• compare the ability of energy infrastructure project types (efficiency, renewable energy, fuel switching) to reduce the cost of energy in communities,
• determine the capital investment needed and the resulting energy savings to communities.

Disclaimer: The results presented in the model results are generated from available data on population, consumption, generation, and information on technologies analyzed. For some communities this information may be incomplete. If you have, or know of, a source of data that could help improve the model, please contact The Alaska Energy Authority.

Resources with more details on the Alaska Affordable Energy Model:

• AAEM Wiki
• Alaska Energy Authority's Affordable Energy Strategy
• Browse Model Run Results - model version: 1.0.0 data version: 1.0.0
• Review the Model Documentation
• Alaska Energy Data Gateway

Installing dependencies

Dependencies for the Alaska Affordable Energy Model can be installed using pip

pip install --user -r requirements.txt

See more info on dependencies in the documentation.

Installation

See: https://github.com/gina-alaska/alaska_affordable_energy_model/wiki#setting-up-a-workstation-to-run-the-model

Building the AAEM documentation

Building the documentation requires that Sphinx be installed.

pip install Sphinx

To build the docs in the docs/build folder, from the root of the code repository:

sphinx-build  -b html ./docs/source/ docs/build/

or more generally:

sphinx-build  -b html <path to model docs/source> <path to build documentation>

Alternatively, online model documentation is available at: http://model-docs.akenergyinventory.org

Initial model setup

From the AAEM repository directory on your local system:

./bin/aaem setup <path_to_model_results> <path_to_local_data>

where is a directory that will be created for the model configuration and results, and is the path to your local Github data repository (cloned from https://github.com/gina-alaska/alaska_affordable_energy_model-data).

Running the model

See the documentation for advanced instructions on installation and running: http://model-docs.akenergyinventory.org

Citation

If you would like to use AAEM data, model components, or results in your work, please contact Neil McMahon for citation information.

Contributors

Contributors to the AAEM include:

• Alaska Energy Authority: Neil McMahon
• UAF/GINA: Jessie Cherry, Jennifer Delamere, Rawser Spicer, Jason Grimes, Dayne Broderson, Will Fisher
• Alaska Energy Data Gateway: Brenden Hernandez, Kyle Borash

Contacts

For more information on the AAEM and its supporting data, contact: Neil McMahon, Planning Manager, Alaska Energy Authority, NMcMahon@aidea.org

Model support questions can be addressed to: support+aaem@gina.alaska.edu