Connecting the railbelt: Alaska's electric providers consider unification to deal with aging infrastructure, growing demand and escalating fuel costs.

• Author: Liles, Patricia
• Position: ENERGY

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Electric power utilities throughout the United States, including the handful in Alaska, are struggling to accommodate increasing demand for their service, while dealing with tightening supplies of fuel traditionally used to create electricity.

In Alaska, electric power providers rely heavily on traditional fossil fuel sources to generate electricity--natural gas or oil-based fuels--resources that have dramatically increased in cost in recent months.

While demand and the cost to generate electricity are both escalating, the ability to expand or replace electric-generation infrastructure is facing potential regulatory constriction in the near future. Plans to build new power plants are being altered, due in part to the growing public discussion about further regulating emissions from fossil fuel consumption, action touted as a way to counteract the perceived threat of global warming.

Alaska's power providers feel these forces even more acutely--the state's interconnected power grid, which stretches from the Kenai Peninsula up through the Interior, is solely dependent on the generation resources and transmission lines operated by the six independent utility providers and the State of Alaska. Any problems or shortages must be resolved within the existing grid, as there is no connection with any other electric system.

All of these issues are contributing to a renewed effort among some of Alaska's Railbelt electric utilities to work collaboratively, both on specific new power generation projects and on plans for a unified power provider network, a concept that state leaders and electric utility managers have discussed for years.

RAILBELT UTILITIES BEGIN TALKS

In February, three of Alaska's six Railbelt utilities publicly announced their efforts to begin talks about creating a unified power system in Alaska, which would be responsible for transmission and generation services serving customers along the Railbelt power grid. Those three include Chugach Electric Association, Golden Valley Electric Association and Homer Electric Association.

The three cooperatives said in a press release that they envision governance of the unified power provider to include representation from each of the Railbelt utilities, along with the State of Alaska, which owns the Bradley Lake hydroelectric project, the Alaska Intertie between Willow and Healy and the Healy Clean Coal power plant.

"It is our hope that the unified system will result in...