Reinventing electricity in Alaska's Railbelt: a how-to soon to come.

• Author: Klouda, Naomi
• Position: ENERGY

Alaska's Railbelt communities form a patched grid of six separate owners when it comes to electricity. The Matanuska Electric Association (MEA) supplies electricity for lights and heat in an area sprawling from Eagle River to Denali National Park. The northern-most cooperative, Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA), takes over from MEA at the park's borders for coverage centered in Fairbanks that supplies heat and light with 3,177 miles of power lines in a 5,973 square mile service territory that includes North Pole, Chena Hot Springs, Delta Junction, Healy, Nenana, and Cantwell.

The most populous segment of the state, Anchorage, comes under one or the other of two electrical utilities' coverage: Chugach Electric Association (Chugach) or Municipal Light and Power (ML&P). Chugach, an Anchorage co-op formed in 1948, serves an area extending its transmission lines to from Hope and Moose Pass in the South to Eagle River in the north and, more recently, to Fire Island in Cook Inlet. ML&P's twenty square miles includes Anchorage's oldest neighborhoods, Downtown and Midtown business districts, and the industrial loads at the Port of Anchorage. This utility, formed in 1932, also serves Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and powers 3,911 street lights.

What isn't covered by Chugach on the Kenai Peninsula is handled by Homer Electric Association (HEA) for the larger towns of Homer, Kenai, and Soldotna, as well as smaller hamlets and villages across Kachemak Bay. The City of Seward operates its own power plant, Seward Electric System, making it the smallest of the six Railbelt utilities.

What if these six utilities joined forces under one umbrella to create a unified system? That's an idea many years old that is now gaining better traction: the Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA) will be issuing a recommendation in June after rounds of public testimony end in May.

If the utilities do form what's called a Uniform System Operator, or USO, what's at stake? What would it take in terms of changing the Alaska Regulatory Commission's statutes? The proposal, if it proves feasible, offers to gather all of these separately operating utilities as a joint endeavor. The catalyst for accomplishing this is called ARCTEC, an acronym for Alaska Railbelt Cooperative Transmission and Electric Company. ARCTEC's board is made up of two members from each Chugach, MEA, GVEA, and SES who direct the efforts of Chairman David Gillespie. Joe Griffith, MEA's CEO, acts as the chief executive of ARCTEC.

The Problem

That Alaska has some of the highest utility rates in the nation is a well-worn problem that stymies business projects. Even though the state produces its own natural gas and fuel as well as hydro and wind projects, the expenses continue because of an aging infrastructure in need of replacement. ARCTEC estimates it...