How We Built Digital Twins That Could Survive Remote Alaska

How We Built Digital Twins That Could Survive Remote Alaska

When you think about energy infrastructure, you might picture dense grids, smart meters, and sprawling cities.

But in rural Alaska, keeping the lights on is a different challenge altogether.

Communities are separated by hundreds of miles of mountains, tundra, and coastline—accessible only by bush plane, boat, or snow machine. Infrastructure is fragile, aging, and expensive to maintain. And when something breaks, help is often days away. Housing costs are some of the highest in the nation, and fuel prices, already at a pricey premium, are incredibly volatile. Much of remote Alaska power is generated locally through diesel-powered engines. To keep the lights on, communities rely on the fuel supply chain; deliveries by maritime tankers, or through WWII-era fuel planes.

To reduce the financial and logistical burden on these communities, many have been on the journey towards renewable energy, as a viable alternative to diesel generation; some even as long as 30+ years. Even modest reductions in diesel fuel use can lead to immediate cost savings for utility members. In some cases, local microgrids have achieved partial “diesel-off” periods—some even reporting up to a 50% or more offset in diesel reliance.

Summer day at the renewables farm in Kotzebue, Alaska, a community of 3,000+ in the Northwest.

As momentum grew, successful implementations of renewables in several communities caught the attention of tribal entities, state agencies, and federal funders alike. Everyone wanted to support the rollout of alternative energy projects across Alaska. But with over 100 remote communities—each with its own geography, infrastructure, and cultural context—spread across thousands of miles, a critical question emerged: Even with funding secured, how do you decide where to start?

Enter the Alaska Energyshed project. Spearheaded by the Alaska Municipal League, Launch Alaska (a clean-tech non-profit), and funded through the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), they set out to do something unprecedented: create a digital foundation for some of the most remote energy systems in the country, using geospatial visuals and asset data collection to provide a snapshot in time of as-is grid conditions. With that data, investors, policymakers, researchers, and local leadership can plan and invest wisely into renewable infrastructure.

Project Scope
Kartorium was awarded a contract for complete grid inventorying and data capture. Our team, project partners, and community stakeholders planned projects that spanned across 6 communities in Northwest Alaska and 6 in the Southeast, all during the short window of snow-free Alaska terrain, avoiding dicey travel conditions and increasing the chances of blue sky days for good quality imagery. Community visits, complete with drone flights, terrestrial LiDAR, and ground-level asset surveys all had to come together seamlessly.

Drone imagery: Alaska Remote Imaging (ARI) handled aerial data capture across all 12 communities using a DJI Mavic 3E with an active RTK link to ensure high-accuracy positioning. Depending on the site needs, ARI utilized both top-down and smart oblique mapping techniques. Oblique mapping helped improve 3D reconstruction in complex environments. Imagery deliverables included: orthomosaics (.tiff), DSM/DTM elevation models, point clouds, and mesh files.

Virtual Walkthroughs: On the ground, the Kartorium team documented critical facilities using Matterport Pro3 cameras, allowing us to quickly capture 3D visual walkthroughs. To deliver a unified experience alongside our other datasets, we exported the processed Matterport scans out of their platform and hosted them within Kartorium’s system.

Asset Surveys: While walking each site, the Kartorium field team, along with a team from Deerstone Consulting, used Kartorium’s browser-based app to catalog assets, complete surveys, and capture supplemental photos.

6 Communities in the Northwest, and 6 in the Southeast

Data Delivery
All drone LiDAR, photogrammetry, raster imagery, virtual walkthroughs, existing GIS datasets, and asset surveys were brought together and hosted in Kartorium’s digital twin platform—a spatially organized, browser-accessible environment where users could:

• Explore infrastructure visually through 3D scenes and walkthroughs
• Access detailed asset inventories linked directly to real-world locations
• Attach photos, maintenance records, and survey results within visual context

Virtual walkthrough with embedded asset tags and information

Meshes and point clouds hosted and accessible via the browser

Orthomosaics and photogrammetry in GIS context with asset tags

Logistics and Connectivity
With the vision and roles for this expansive project set, we came face to face with the nemesis of remote Alaska; logistics.

Most Alaskan villages are accessible only by small aircraft—and flights are few, far between, and weather-dependent. One storm system could delay travel for days, blowing apart carefully coordinated schedules. Not to mention, winter storms can wreak havoc on flights en route, posing serious life-threatening risks to remote travel.

Working closely with local communities and partners, we adapted travel plans on the fly—sometimes literally. Flexibility wasn’t optional; it was essential.

Kartorium’s project lead, Dimitrios Alexiadis has a great article outlining some of those challenges in detail – you can read that here:
Lines, Dots, and Power Poles: How the Energyshed Project Changed My Perspective

Past smaller projects in remote Alaska taught us some hard but valuable lessons about capturing data in the field—lessons we carried forward to help us scale and move more efficiently on this project. Early on, we experimented with different technologies to support asset inventories, ranging from open-source collection apps to integrations with software already used by utilities. Those initial efforts were a slog, especially during data cleanup.

On the frontend, we had relied solely on cellular connections, assuming reasonable stability around population centers. But as soon as we pushed out to the edges of the grid, we lost connectivity. While the tools we used could save GPS and asset information locally, uploading later still led to conflicts, errors, and degraded data integrity. After encountering so many hiccups, we couldn’t fully trust the resulting datasets. We ended up spending countless hours manually integrating, updating, and validating information across different sources.

Given the size, scale, and time horizon of this project, we couldn’t afford to repeat past mistakes. Efficiency and simplicity had to be the foundations of our success. Our solution? Eliminate the middleman by building asset data collection and databasing directly into our platform. By leveraging our internal development team, we could control the design, simplify frontend data capture usability, automate tedious tasks, and dramatically reduce backend cleanup.

Efficiency and simplicity had to be the foundations of our success.

That still left one major challenge: connectivity. Even with a smooth capture interface, we couldn’t risk needing repeat trips. We needed to collect great data—the first time.

We had two options:
Option 1: Build a software-first approach with local storage capabilities, allowing teams to capture data offline and upload it later when they had service.
Option 2: Take a hardware-first approach to guarantee continuous internet connectivity during capture, eliminating the need for later syncing.

When weighing the two, we focused on what we could realistically control during the project. Our team’s expertise is in software; we have plenty of technical depth and programming experience. But no matter how good the developers—or how thorough the test cases and local trials—there’s always risk when software faces real-world conditions. The stress, unpredictability, and edge cases of remote Alaska would push any system beyond what we could fully simulate beforehand.

Many communities in Alaska have some cellular coverage—especially near airports, schools, or main buildings. But cell signal strength is inconsistent from village to village, and even within a single community, service can vary block to block. In some places, LTE might be usable outside, but dead inside metal-clad utility buildings. Other times, coverage exists but bandwidth is so limited that uploads can time out or fail entirely.

Applying that principle in this situation, we decided to keep our software focused on data capture and usability, and let hardware handle connectivity and transmission. It was a simpler, more robust strategy—and a big reason the project succeeded.

In programming, there’s something known as the Single Responsibility Principle: Each piece of code should have one clear, focused job.

When you mix responsibilities, systems become harder to test, debug, and update—because a change in one area can easily break something else.

Several satellite internet providers were available, but with SpaceX’s Starlink service recently expanding into the Northern Hemisphere and above the Arctic Circle, we leaned in that direction.

At the time, Starlink offered both residential and mobile systems. We knew we’d be constantly on the move, walking down entire distribution grids, but the mobile systems were designed to be mounted permanently on vehicles or RVs. Since we didn’t know what kind of vehicle we’d have—if any—we chose the residential antenna instead. Even while moving, the residential panels could maintain a stable connection to the satellites as long as we kept our speeds below a certain threshold. This gave us the flexibility we needed to adapt to whatever conditions, considerations, or situations we faced once we arrived at the communities.

Starlink setup aboard the terrain-conquering wagon

We moved forward with our decision to bring extra gear to solve the connectivity challenges. It sounded simple enough in planning, but proved much tougher physically and logistically in practice. Not only did we need to haul the Starlink equipment, we also had to figure out how to power it. Portable battery systems have become more affordable and manageable in terms of weight and size—but there was a catch we didn’t anticipate: they’re classified as hazardous materials. Many small airlines don’t allow batteries onboard, either as carry-on or cargo, even though they’re smaller than a typical carry-on bag. This meant we couldn’t simply travel with all our gear. Instead, we had to start shipping equipment ahead of time, coordinating with local airlines and community members to receive and store it safely for our arrival. Because of the hazardous material classification, we also had to follow a special packing procedure: buy a “hazard bucket”—essentially a thick, five-gallon hardware store bucket with a lid—and pack the battery inside before forwarding it to the next destination.

Our connectivity solution seemed straightforward on paper, but putting it into practice still came with challenges. The Starlink system performed as expected, delivering reliable internet via satellite. What we didn’t anticipate, however, was how much power it would draw.

Our portable battery systems—small but powerful—could keep Starlink running for most of the day. But because we needed to move quickly, our teams were often in the field for long shifts, sometimes stretching 14 hours or more. While we could recharge the batteries overnight, the reality of late nights and early mornings meant we had to be careful. We used the battery power as sparingly as possible during the day to conserve charge and make sure we could stay connected when it mattered most.

Some utilities and communities allowed us to use their vehicles to access service areas. To save battery life, we initially tried plugging the Starlink system directly into the vehicle’s inverter. But we quickly ran into a problem: vehicle power supply wasn’t stable. Even while running, the inverters failed to deliver constant power. Perhaps an alternator problem, not sure. Without an uninterrupted power supply, the Starlink would fritz out, killing the connection.

Rather than trying to work around it, we changed our approach: we used the portable battery’s cigarette lighter inverter to charge it while the engine was running, and kept the Starlink system connected directly to the battery to maintain a stable, uninterrupted power supply. The inside of the vehicle probably looked like a mad scientist’s lab; cords, cables, flashing lights, antenna—but it worked!

Starlink setup mounted to top of vehicle

12 Down, None To Go
One advantage of running 12 projects back-to-back in a short timeframe was the ability to iterate quickly, with each one going more smoothly than the last.

By the end of the fall—despite changing flights, thousands of air miles, weather delays, equipment hiccups, wildlife encounters, and nights spent on concrete school floors—we had successfully mapped all 12 communities.

We only had to fly back to three sites. Late in the season, we lost daylight due to bad weather and had to cut scans short to catch flights before storms stranded us.

It wasn’t always pretty, but by the end, the Alaskan logistics beast was slain—and the project was a smashing success.

What’s Next
For the first time, Alaska’s remote communities have a living digital map of their energy systems—enabling smarter maintenance, better planning, and a more resilient energy future.

With this data, planners and analysts can identify which communities have infrastructure ready for renewable energy investment. As systems grow and evolve with more alternative energy sources, this living documentation ensures that critical information is captured, updated, and accessible to operators—helping sustain and maximize the impact of these investments for years to come.

Kartorium and Deerstone Consulting field teams at the Kotzebue Electric solar and wind farms

A big thank you to Colton from Lidar News ! Colton helps bridge the gap between geospatial innovation and practical field use. His work supports modern infrastructure management through intuitive, web-based solutions that empower teams across engineering, operations, and asset management.Learn more at kartorium.com or connect with Colton on LinkedIn.

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