Wartsila update: MEA's Eklutna Generation Station takes shape.

• Author: Sharpe, Margaret
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Energy & Power

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"Heat and light are not optional in Alaska," says Joe Griffith, general manager of Matanuska Electric Association (MEA). He's been working on a plan to make sure that MEA members are not left in the cold and dark when their contract with Chugach Electric Association expires at the end of 2014. Construction on MEA's own Eklutna Generation Station is about halfway complete, and MEA is aiming to be generating its own electricity starting January 1, 2015.

For the past twenty-five years, MEA has been strictly a distribution utility and bought almost all of its power from Chugach. The REA (Rural Electrification Administration), a former agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, decided to only fund one generation utility in the region. At the time, MEA's membership was less than ten thousand, so the money went to Chugach. As the contract end-date neared, attempts were made to renegotiate for possible renewal, extension, or modification of agreement; but Chugach and MEA did not achieve agreement. The current administration at MEA decided to make a go of generating power on their own.

The MEA Solution

MEA is Alaska's oldest and second-largest electrical utility, supplying safe, reliable power to its sixty thousand members. When Griffith joined MEA in mid-2009, he says "the first thing that was thrown on my plate was, 'What are you going to do about this? Our power supply runs out in about five-and-a-half years--we don't have anything on the books.'" MEA was left out of the process for the new Southcentral Power Plant in Anchorage--a joint venture between Chugach and Municipal Light and Power. "So I put a study team together and figured out what we could do to ensure that we had a power supply for our customers out here come January 1, 2015," he says. "That's how we made the decision to go with this [Eklutna Generation Station]."

In 2009, MEA acquired approximately seventy acres northeast of the Eklutna Interchange of the Glenn Highway. "Interestingly, it was the old original Eklutna hydrofacility power block site. So it was already a power plant back in the late forties/early fifties--which was nice because the ground had already been leveled and compacted," says Griffith. "In fact, the old building is still there."

Construction on the project started in spring 2012; if all goes per plan, completion and operation should be on target for the end of 2014. "The project is about midway through," Griffith says. "We have a...