December 4, 2009
From KRBD in Ketchikan: More than 20 years in the making, the Swan-Tyee electrical intertie is officially up and running. As Deanna Garrison reports, the southeast Alaska power agency began testing the new 57-mile transmission line last month and is now using the intertie daily. To hear the full story, click here
November 11, 2009
From the Associated Press: ANGOON — The city of Angoon has been granted a preliminary permit for the Ruth Lake hydropower project. The 20 megawatt hydropower project is designed to produce low cost electricity for Angoon and to eventually provide hydropower to other Southeast communities. Read more
October 17, 2009
From Margaret Bauman at the Alaska Journal of Commerce: A new boiler installed just weeks ago in the powerhouse in King Cove, on the Alaska Peninsula, is proving golden for a project that has already generated enough waste heat to save the area’s school district thousands of dollars in pricy diesel fuel. It’s the latest addition to the Delta Creek hydroelectric facility, a $5.7 million utility that came online in August 2008 as an alternative to diesel as the sole energy source. The significance of the new boiler is that the city will be able to take what is still a fair amount of surplus hydroelectric power, run it through the electric boiler and produce waste heat for the local school, in addition to waste heat already generated from diesel fuel used when hydro power runs lower in winter months. Read more
October 9, 2009
From KFSK radio in Petersburg: The city of Angoon has won a preliminary permit for studying a proposed power plant at Scenery Creek, in Thomas Bay north of Petersburg. The spot is one of three sites in the remote mainland bay under consideration for power generation. Angoon’s permit application says the city would sell power to Petersburg, Wrangell and Ketchikan with money from those sales helping to reduce the cost of power generation in Angoon. Hear more
October 5, 2009
A dam on the Susitna River is one of several options being talked about for a long-term energy solution for Southcentral Alaska. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports on a state-funded study due out next spring on the idea and includes an interesting historical timeline that dates the first recommendation for the dam back to 1961.
Talk of the long-discussed proposal to dam the Susitna River for electricity is again circling Fairbanks. Democratic Sen. Joe Thomas is presenting details of the proposal to groups in Fairbanks three months before next spring’s legislative session. And state energy specialists are studying the project more than two decades after a 1980s economic bust left plans on the shelf. Read more
June 12, 2009
For decades, most of the nation’s renewable power has come from dams, which supplied cheap electricity without requiring fossil fuels. But the federal agencies running the dams often compiled woeful track records on other environmental issues.
Now, with the focus in Washington on clean power, some dam agencies are starting to go green, embracing wind power and energy conservation. The most aggressive is the Bonneville Power Administration, whose power lines carry much of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest. Yet the shift of emphasis at the dam agencies is proving far from simple. It could end up pitting one environmental goal against another, a tension that is emerging in renewable-power projects across the country.
April 13, 2009
Alaska’s largest conservation coalition is now on record supporting a hydro project and a gasline routing option through Denali National Park. “This is all part of recognizing how we get to 50% renewable energy by 2025 and relying on natural gas as the ‘bridge’ fuel”, notes Kate Troll, Executive Director of Alaska Conservation Alliance (ACA).
Continue reading ‘Conservation Groups Walking the Talk on Energy’
