**Title**: Energy in the North - Anna Beth Icke
**Date**: September 02, 2026
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Anna Beth Icke

00;00;00;03 - 00;00;13;16 [Anna Beth Icke] But when you have a small grid or you only have one connection, like the Railbelt, if you lose your power, you can't get it from anywhere else. There's nowhere else to just trade energy. You can't be like, oh, let's just call California and take some of theirs

00;00;13;16 - 00;00;44;19 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North, I spoke with Anna Beth Ikki, a recent electrical engineering graduate from the University of Alabama and one of two Utility Research Partnerships interns funded by the Office of Naval Research working on the Black Start or Zombie Apocalypse project. Anna Beth is working with Catelin Mo, a mechanical engineering student from the University of Texas in Austin. I began the conversation with Anna Beth by asking about the benefits of being an electrical engineer and working with a mechanical engineer.

00;00;44;19 - 00;01;05;19 [Anna Beth Icke] We've kind of been able to split up the work to where she handles most of the physical modeling type of things, and I'm doing a lot of the electrical interconnection and energy type of stuff. So it's been really fun to kind of play to our strengths on that. But hopefully there is no need for our project. But no one ever wants to have a power outage happen. They just happen.

00;01;05;19 - 00;01;09;16 [Amanda Byrd] So I'd never really heard of a black start before this project.

00;01;09;16 - 00;02;10;08 [Anna Beth Icke] Yeah, so especially in the lower 48 or any larger grid, there's not really a need for a black start system, because even if your power's down in one area, you have a gigantic grid that still has things that are energized. But when you have a small grid or you only have one connection, like the Railbelt, if you lose your power, you can't get it from anywhere else. There's nowhere else to just trade energy. You can't be like, oh, let's just call California and take some of theirs because there is no California attached to you. And so to start up a power plant, you need external energy to turn on the fan, to turn on the lights, to start the motors, to light the fire. All of that takes energy and you have to get that from somewhere. So black starting is basically with no external energy, having some sort of engine or battery system or backup generator that is capable of running all those auxiliaries and getting the power plant started to where it can then produce power to distribute everywhere.

00;02;10;08 - 00;02;29;03 [Amanda Byrd] We're on a microgrid here on campus, and we can be connected to GVEA if we want to. We can disconnect ourselves from from GVEA. It just seems really important that if we were going to have some kind of massive power outage, that we would be able to start our generators from nothing.

00;02;29;03 - 00;03;27;13 [Anna Beth Icke] One of the big hurdles is just that we're dealing with a ‘what if’ situation. The power plant has always been able to just pull from the tie to GVEA to get back up and online. And so people are always hesitant to spend time, energy and money on things that are not issues yet. So it's always a bit of a battle to get people to see why it's so important, because we're dealing with a well, what if it's 40 degrees below freezing and there's no power and there's no connection? And they're like, okay, great, but that hasn't happened. And then I think along with that is the type of people that we're working with and in and around are really busy people that are keeping the lights on in the campus, keeping the lights on in Fairbanks, they are running these full time, 24 seven power plants. And so to get time with them to talk about something that's a very like conceptual, high level academic exploration can be difficult.

00;03;27;13 - 00;03;34;02 [Amanda Byrd] And you are working with Daisy Huang and Jeremy Kasper, that's going to be a pretty fun duo.

00;03;34;02 - 00;04;18;07 [Anna Beth Icke] Oh, yes. They're great. They're great. I couldn't have asked for better mentors. Honestly, I think part of what's so fun is that they're both super established at ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ. They've both been here for a very long time, worked at ACEP for a very time. And so not only do they know what they're doing, they also know all of the people. And so they've been really great about connecting us with different resources and people who can help, not just within ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ, but even with Travis at GVEA. Getting to talk with him, we're going to go to our power plant on Friday, actually, which will be a super awesome chance for us to see, electromechanical diesel generator in action. And so leveraging those connections and being super open to sitting in on our meetings and having us meet all the people and transfer their knowledge to us has been awesome.

00;04;18;07 - 00;04;27;12 [Amanda Byrd] So you just graduated from the University of Alabama? How on earth did you find an internship in Fairbanks, ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ? And why did you apply?

00;04;27;12 - 00;05;10;13 [Anna Beth Icke] I am going back to get my masters, so I'm headed right back to school in August. So while all of my friends were looking for their full time opportunities and moving on to the real world, I knew well, I just need another summer opportunity because I'm going to go be a student again come August. The AUSI and utility partnership interns, where they allow people who are recent grads to apply. I figured it, ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ's cool, I'll just send in an application and it almost seemed too good to be true at first. When I got the interview, I was shocked. I had no idea that it would actually come true. And so then I got the interview and I was like, wow, this is awesome. And then I got the offer and I was like, I have to do it. Like, I can't turn that down. That's too cool of an opportunity to say no.

00;05;10;13 - 00;05;14;14 [Amanda Byrd] Anna Beth Icke a summer Utility Research Partnership intern at the ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ Center for Energy and Power, and I'm Amanda Byrd, Chief Storyteller for ACEP. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep and follow us on social media.