Lowering the cost of rural energy: investments in sustainability save millions.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: ENERGY

Rural Alaskans pay the highest energy costs in the nation. And they often have to pay those costs with cash income far below the national and state averages. In her introduction to a 2012 Commonwealth North energy sustainability report, President and CEO Meera Kohler stated, "The poorest Alaska households pay up to 47 percent of their income on energy, more than five times their urban neighbors." That can translate to diesel fuel at $10 per gallon and electrical rates of $1 per kilowatt hour.

"In terms of heating the home, many will come and buy heating fuel in five gallon increments; that's what they can afford at the moment," says Jolene John, a former community development manager for environment and energy for the Rural Alaska Community Action Program (RurAL CAP). "The five gallon purchase could last them between two and three days." John is now an area manager for the USDA Rural Development program.

A wide range of government and social service agencies have worked on the problem for decades. Hundreds of millions of government and private dollars have been spent. But for rural Alaskans, sky high energy costs seem as much of a fact of life as permafrost.

All this work done and money spent has not been in vain, however. Across the state, investments in energy conservation and efficiency are saving millions of dollars for homeowners, institutions, and businesses. Renewable energy technologies--notably wind turbines--are becoming a more common sight in rural Alaska.

The Commonwealth North Report entitled Energy for a Sustainable Alaska: The Rural Conundrum calls for developing an Alaska that is "energy self-sufficient, supplying all our own energy needs" and for Alaskans to be "the most energy efficient people in the nation."

Connecting Villages

Since 1968, the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC) has been working with member communities to provide reliable electrical power to rural villages. Today, the organization serves fifty-six villages, from Minto, east of Fairbanks, to Gambell and Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island and from the North Slope to Kodiak Island. The cooperative utility provides efficiency for its members--both by upgrading the fossil fuel facilities and by adding renewables to the mix.

Steve Gilbert, AVEC's energy project manager, says the utility has been charged by its board of directors with reducing the diesel fuel burned in member villages by 25 percent, cutting the number of separate power plants by half, and reducing operating costs in those remaining plants.

The most straightforward way to achieve immediate reduction in fuel use is to install a new generator. State-of-the-art units can generate about 15 kWh per gallon of fuel, versus 11 to 12 kWh per gallon for some of the older models. The newer computer-controlled units also provide other efficiencies.

In some cases, waste heat from the generators--heat that had previously been lost-is now being recovered to warm nearby buildings. AVEC operates thirty-four wind turbines in eleven member communities.

Further, AVEC also gains operating efficiency when member villages can be tied together so that one power plant can serve more than one village. This winter, for instance, AVEC plans to build an intertie to connect a new power plant in Stebbins with the village of St. Michael and has funding to connect New Stuyahok and Ekwok.

Gilbert says AVEC is gauging the wind resources along the intertie route between communities to assess the feasibility of...