Approximately 50 participants from at least nine countries gathered March 14 and 15 in Piteå, Sweden (65° latitude) to exchange ideas around the unique opportunities and challenges of deploying solar photovoltaic (PV) technology in high latitude regions.
April 8, 2024
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Approximately 50 participants from at least nine countries gathered March 14 and 15 in Piteå, Sweden (65° latitude), capping off two years of collaborative planning in order to exchange ideas around the unique opportunities and challenges of deploying solar photovoltaic (PV) technology in high latitude regions.
This High Latitude Solar Workshop was organized by our office in collaboration with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Sandia National Laboratories, and Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE).
The two-day workshop kicked off with site visits. The group spent a snowy day visiting two solar plants – a 100 kW vertical bifacial PV pilot plant installed by Sunna Group and a fixed-tilt PV plant owned and operated by Luleå Energy. These site visits allowed attendees to get into the real-life applications of the research and deployment of using solar PV technology in extreme climates that come with heavy snow loads, high winds, and extreme cold temperatures, all of which can increase the risk of equipment failures linked with mechanical loading and material property changes.
The group also visited the local municipal utility to talk over policy impacts and capped the day off with a visit to the Piteå Solvåg, an art installation composed of bifacial PV modules.
The rest of the workshop included sessions on reports from the countries about their lessons learned and activities, PV performance modeling in high latitudes, PV reliability issues, industry perspectives, and examples of PV integration.
Arctic Energy Office Director Erin Whitney helped organize this workshop and is now leading follow up efforts to coordinate a review article and future collaborations. “As the cost of solar PV technology comes down and as deployments expand into high latitude regions, it's really important we have a research and deployment community that’s poised to share lessons learned and best practices to harvest maximum solar energy in these unique regions,” Director Whitney shared. “Our communities are smaller, our challenges in the high north are different, and working together helps us address these issues more effectively and efficiently. This can have cascading effect as we continue this work.”
Director Whitney and the organizing team are now summarizing the outcomes of the workshop, current needs, best practices, and next steps for advancing PV in high latitudes. The workshop organizing committee is already planning the next high latitude PV event as well as continuing to gather and connect researchers for future collaborations.
For a full breakdown of the workshop program and presentations, please see: https://pvpmc.sandia.gov/workshops-and-pubs/workshops/2024-high-lat-pv-workshop-pitea/.
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AnneMarie Horowitz
AnneMarie Horowitz is the Chief of Staff for the Arctic Energy Office. She joined the Arctic Energy Office in May 2023, and previously served as the Acting Communications Director until September 2023. AnneMarie has been with the Energy Department since 2010, and was previously on the digital team of the Office of Public Affairs, where she managed digital projects and internal employee communications efforts. AnneMarie was the Digital Communications Manager from March 2023 - September 2023 for the Department of Health and Human Affairs' Public Education Campaign, We Can Do This, to share information about the COVID vaccine.
AnneMarie founded two active employee resource groups at the Department of Energy: POWER (Professional Opportunities for Women in Energy Realized) and the Emerging Professionals Group. From 2015 - 2017 she served as the Special Advisor on workforce issues for Deputy Secretary of Energy Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall. She has also previously worked in the Under Secretary for Management and Performance and the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity.
AnneMarie created the STEM Rising: Women @ Energy series, featuring profiles of women from the agency who work in STEM careers. She was critical to establishing the Equality in Energy Transitions Initiative, a dual-hatted effort of the International Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Ministerial to advance the transition to a clean energy economy by engaging more women in clean energy, and is involved with the U.S. C3E Initiative as an award reviewer and communication. During the Obama Administration she was a DOE designee to the White House Council on Women and Girls. AnneMarie was a U.S. delegate to the APEC Women in the Economy Forum in 2014 in Beijing, China.
AnneMarie has a BA in Political Science from the University of Portland and a Masters of Government from Johns Hopkins University. She resides in Philadelphia.