Renewable Energy for Remote Lodge

Kenai Fjords Tours has an exclusive Fox Island Lodge that serves as a destination for the daily tours and provides over night accommodations as well. The Fox Island Day Lodge offers gourmet salmon, prime rib and Alaskan king crab meals for their guests.

The lodge's challenge was to provide clean and renewable power for their day lodge and overnight facilities. Kenai Fjords was committed to reduce their use of a generator, that was running 24/7, all summer long, and to take advantage of renewable energy. Transporting fuel is especially challenging as the fuel for the generator had to be loaded manually over “natural/rocky” terrain. The risk of a fuel spill had to be minimized. The objective was to run the generator for a short period of time each day and use much less fuel.

RES engineered and installed an 11KW system with a large battery bank and solar panels on the lodge and smaller systems for the over-night cabins. The inverter was customized to only use the generator after peak visiting time frames and to charge the battery bank in the shortest time possible.

Kenai Fjords was able to reduce their generator usage by 75%, only running the generator to charge their batteries for four hours a day!