These villages buy and burn several hundred thousand gallons of diesel fuel per year in inefficient generators at costs that can approach $10 per gallon while spewing unhealthy fumes and soot. To ease their diesel dependence, some Alaskan villages have been able to secure financing to construct wind projects and small-scale, centralized electricity systems, known as micro grids. But the challenges of sizing and engineering these systems have slowed their development and installation. Even with generous support from the state and others, only about 25 of these systems have been installed over the past 20 years.

We can do better. In collaboration with government labs, the state of Alaska, private companies and investors, the United States is developing modular wind and solar energy systems that will work in isolated communities in Alaska, on island nations, in the African bush and elsewhere.

These systems are remarkably compact. Consider one that would provide enough renewable power for electricity, heating and cooling for a village of 100 to 200 people. It would include a refrigerator-size control center and a similarly sized container for storage batteries. The power would come either from one to five wind turbines, each about 100 feet tall with 20-foot-long blades, or from a solar panel array covering 700 square feet or more. Modern diesel generators would kick in when the wind wasn’t blowing or the sun wasn’t shining.

Bigger villages would simply scale up by adding on more modules. With standardized specifications, costs would drop as production ramped up and as the modular operations replaced the old headache-causing systems and their one-of-a-kind maintenance problems.

The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has been working with the Department of the Interior and industry on the Remote Community Renewable Energy Partnership to make this happen. Drawing from the Department of Defense’s successful deployment of small renewable energy-based systems to support forward-stationed troops, the lab is developing design specifications for a modular renewable energy system that aims to produce much cleaner energy, at half of today’s costs. This would be accomplished by replacing 75 percent of diesel use for electricity and heat in the Arctic villages (relying primarily on wind power) and for electricity and cooling in the tropics (relying primarily on solar power).