Smoke near power lines on the Kenai Peninsula during the Swan Lake Fire on Aug. 15, 2019.
RRC Chair Julie Estey said the application commits the fledgling organization to “continued collaboration, transparency, technical excellence and inclusion,” as the group attempts to meet the ever-evolving demands of Railbelt consumers. In June 2015, the five-member RCA described the Railbelt grid as “fragmented” and “balkanized,” outlining how the lack of a system-wide, institutional structure at the time led the utilities to collectively invest approximately $1.5 billion in separate new gas-fired generation facilities with little evaluation as to what would be best for the Railbelt grid overall.
The utilities estimated that a four-month outage in 2019, after a stretch of transmission lines was damaged by thenear Cooper Landing, cost ratepayers in Anchorage, the Mat-Su and Fairbanks nearly an extra $12 million because it cut off power from Bradley Lake. Studies commissioned by the Alaska Energy Authority have concluded that a robust, redundant Railbelt transmission system would cost upward of $900 million, though many utility leaders question the need for many of the individual investments within that total.
“It will be a staff of senior engineers who lead processes that include a working group composed of all different interests,” Rose said. “The staff is then acting independently, we hope, of both the influence that the board may have and the influence that the governance committee may have.”