Appendix A: About this Report
Description of the 2024 Alaska Electricity Trends Report Web Book
A.1 General Overview
This Alaska Electrical Trends Report (AETR) has been produced by the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).
Throughout the years, several agencies have prepared and published reports and data compilations on energy use in Alaska. AETR is complementary to those prior reports, but is not presented in a comparable format.
A.2 Historical Timeline of Prior Reports
Starting in 1969, the first Electric Power Trends report was published by the Alaska Power Administration. During this time, the Alaska Power Administration was a federal agency housed within the U.S. Department of the Interior. Their first publication was known as the “First Annual Report” and covered data from the 1968 fiscal year. However, this became the “Alaska Electric Power Statistics Report” in 1971 and examined data from the 1960-1969 data years. The APA continued to produce intermittent reports until 1983 when the State of Alaska established the Alaska Power Authority (APA), which later became the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA).
Under state direction, the APA/AEA continued to publish intermittent reports on electric power statistics until their final publication in 1992 which covered data years 1960 to 1991. To address the reporting gap, the Alaska Systems Coordinating Council in collaboration with the State of Alaska, Department of Community and Regional Affairs, Division of Energy continued generating reports until 1996 with their final report covering data years 1960 to 1995. Finally, the University of Alaska Anchorage, Institute of Social and Economic Research produced several reports with their last covering 1960 to 2012. Since then, there have been no electric power statistical reports.
The Table A.1 provides a summary of this timeline. This report serves to supplement the reporting gap in electric power statistics for the State of Alaska.
| Year Published | Institution | Data Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| 1971 to 1983 | Alaska Power Administration | 1960 to 1982 |
| 1984 to 1988 | Alaska Power Authority | 1960 to 1987 |
| 1989 to 1992 | Alaska Energy Authority | 1960 to 1991 |
| 1992 to 1996 | Alaska Systems Coordinating Council; State of Alaska | 1960 to 1995 |
| 2003, 2011 to 2015 | University of Alaska Anchorage, Institute of Social and Economic Research | 1960 to 2012 |
For a table of links to these historic reports, please refer to Table B.1.
A.3 Technical Details
This report has been formatted and rendered using Quarto, an open-source scientific and technical publishing system. The initial inspiration for this workflow was provided by the Openscapes project and their Quarto Website Tutorial. This publishing method experimentally models a new (to ACEP) method of automatically generating reports that include data.
The markdown files that create the report reside in the aetr-web-book-2024 GitHub repository. The original format of the report was an HTML-based web book, and an option for rendering it in PDF format was added months later. The generation material and process is publicly accessible and transparent. Errors in the document are flagged using GitHub issues where they can be tracked and addressed by the DCM team. The report also integrates R code for data processing and figure generation.
Early versions of this report contained errors in the data. These were flagged with GitHub issues and corrected in subsequent tagged versions. When data files were updated, the Quarto render updated the figures automatically, reducing the labor required to maintain an up-to-date report.
The web-first workflow of PDF report generation resulted in some formatting issues that are difficult to correct using this system. These issues include pagination that sometimes separates figures from contextual information. While this is not ideal, we hope to refine our techniques in future reports and to eventually produce a publication quality report.
A.4 Notice of Nondiscrimination
The University of Alaska is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer, educational institution and provider. The University of Alaska does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, citizenship, age, sex, physical or mental disability, status as a protected veteran, marital status, changes in marital status, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, parenthood, sexual orientation, gender identity, political affiliation or belief, genetic information, or other legally protected status. The University’s commitment to nondiscrimination, including against sex discrimination, applies to students, employees, and applicants for admission and employment. Contact information, applicable laws, and complaint procedures are included on UA’s statement of nondiscrimination available at www.alaska.edu/nondiscrimination.