Intertie panel votes to proceed with study
The Southeast Conference Intertie Committee voted unanimously this week to go ahead with engineering and feasibility studies, a move that prompted USDA Rural Development State Director Bill Allen - present at the meeting along with Denali Commission Chief of Staff Al Ewing - to promise up to $100,000 to help fund the work.
"Both those folks were ecstatic," said Intertie Coordinator Dave Carlson this week. "They don't want to get involved with funding the projects if you have people that aren't together. They are solidly behind the project. They absolutely think we are going in the right direction, and that was huge."
Carlson explained that the projects will benefit Petersburg. Assuming the Kake-Petersburg intertie is built, he said, "one, we sell more power out of Tyee, which benefits all the rate payers in the Four Dam Pool. Two, we have interties going to the south, and we'll have another one going to the west. That one will get us halfway to Sitka," he said.
Intertie construction, he said, would eventually eliminate the need for the backup diesel generation system used at present. "I'm gonna put my environmental hat on here," he said with just a touch of irony. "The more you burn the hydroelectric power, the less fuel you have to barge up the Narrows and store in tank farms. It just makes sense."
He said that small communities like Kake will benefit the most from construction of interties. "We're all struggling. You think things are difficult here - imagine what they're like in Kake or Hoonah where they're paying 35 cents a kilowatt hour," for power, said Carlson. "We're talking basic infrastructure-type stuff here that everybody in the lower 48 takes for granted. This should have been done years and years ago."
The project will be divided into two phases. In the first, the committee will break down how much money will be needed during various planning, permitting and implementation stages. In the second, the interties will be evaluated to make sure they're the most sorely needed and economically viable in the area. "These projects have to make some level of economic sense, even if they're 100 percent grant funded. If you don't have any electrons going across that line, you're not bringing in enough revenue even to take care of the operation and maintenance," said Carlson. "We all think that these two projects that were selected make sense, but we just need to have an engineer and some experts sit down and really do an evaluation, give us some numbers."
The Southeast Conference Intertie Committee is the interim organization for the as-yet-undetermined legal entity that will eventually take over the intertie. Carlson says that right now, getting projects like those just approved moving is more important than figuring out the group's administrative organization. "What I encourage the committee to look at is: Let's set this legal entity off to the side for the time being. Let's go out and try and first identify a couple projects that make some sense so we can start forming them. From that, once we get that decided, you will know who at least from the start the players have to be at the table," he said.
Carlson plans to get paperwork in motion for an engineering contract immediately, and says that once a contract is awarded, the engineering and feasibility study could be completed in 60 to 90 days.