Healy plant 2 fired up.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Energy & Power

On May 28, the boiler at a long-mothballed power plant in Healy rumbled to life. It was a milestone for the beleaguered facility, which started out more than a decade ago as a highly touted high-tech clean coal experimental facility.

But the technology didn't prove out, and Healy Unit 2, housed in a square white building on the banks of the Nenana River, went dark in 2000 after only a few months of testing.

Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA), the nonprofit rural cooperative that supplies energy for ninety thousand residents in Interior Alaska, bought the plant, dubbed Healy Unit 2, from the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) in 2013 and immediately set to work retrofitting the equipment. When complete, the plant will provide fifty megawatts of coal-fired energy for Interior Alaska, while stabilizing rates, says GVEA spokeswoman Corrine Bradish.

"It's really the first step in bringing it back online," Bradish says of the diesel-powered startup in May. "It's a pretty good accomplishment."

Since the sale was finalized after four years of negotiations, GVEA crews have been busy updating systems, retrofitting, and refurbishing the plant. It was expected to start producing small amounts of energy in June and full coal-fired operations are planned for late July.

The US Department of Energy chose the Healy site in 1989 to showcase experimental technology intended to show that low-grade coal could be burned efficiently, with low emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates. The Healy Clean Coal Plant, as it was called, used a multi-stage burning process designed to reduce emissions.

The $300 million plant was built between 1995 and 1997 using a combination of state, federal, and private funding sources. AIDEA owned the plant with the understanding that GVEA would run it. But after a ninety-day test, GVEA raised questions about the safety and reliability of the technology and refused to take over operations. The plant was shut down amid a legal dispute between GVEA and AIDEA, which was resolved in 2009 when the utility agreed to purchase and operate the plant, with retrofitted technology.

GVEA will spend more than $150 million to buy and refurbish the plant, about half the cost of building a new coal-fired plant from the ground up.

"What they've been doing over the last year is bringing up systems," Bradish says. "What happened [in May] is they ignited one of the burners to start burning diesel fuel...