![](images/Logos/Microgrid%20Knowledge.png)
Alaska looks to microgrids as it
transitions away from an oil economy.
May 29, 2022 By
Lisa Cohn
Traditionally dependent on an oil
economy, Alaska is looking to renewables and microgrids to generate
wealth, cut energy costs, boost resilience and transition away from
fossil fuels.
The Port of Alaska, Homer Electric and
others are developing new microgrids or upgrading existing
fossil-fueled microgrids with renewables and storage.
“As a state, Alaska is facing the reality
of a world transitioning away from our primary export [oil] and
economic foundation,” said Rob Roys, chief innovation officer at
Launch Alaska, which aims to mitigate the effects of climate change.
![](images/images_05_31_2022/pic1.jpg)
Photo by Rocky Grimes/Shutterstock.com
Some rural communities pay as much as
$1.80 per kWh for grid power, he said. The grid is made up of a series
of mostly fossil-fuel-based microgrids operated by rural utilities.
The utilities pay high prices to keep natural gas plants running to
provide “spinning reserves” – backup power in case the grid
experiences a blip or goes down.
By adding renewables, controls and
storage to their systems, the communities can avoid keeping fossil
fuel plants running, saving thousands of dollars a day in one case and
allowing for energy independence.
Danger of food shortages
But high costs aren’t the
only challenge the communities and rural utilities face. Outages can
create safety and food security challenges — especially for the Port
of Alaska, the state’s only port, which supplies food and goods to the
US Department of Defense and 90% of the state’s residents, said Jim
Jager, director of business continuity and external affairs and
facility security officer for the Port of Alaska. He’s planning a
microgrid to provide resilience and lower costs.
The port, whose load swings from 1.5 MW
to 7 MW and includes demand from a nearby military base, Joint Base
Elmendorf-Richardson, wants to use a microgrid to level the demand to
a steady 2.5 MW. The port also wants to cut fossil fuel use and
provide resilience during outages that pose critical risks to the
port, the military base and the residents of Alaska. The microgrid
would include solar – about 2.5 MW to 3.5 MW – storage and a nearby
backup generator owned by a local utility.
An outage at Port of Alaska can cause
food shortages, according to Jager. Ninety-five percent of the food
sold in Alaska has to be brought into the state. Food and goods are
brought in containers that are moved by cranes that need electricity
to operate.
“We have a small market spread out over a
huge area at the end of a long supply chain. If something happens to
break the supply chain, we have six to 10 days and then are out of
food,” Jager said.
In addition, the US Department of Defense
relies on the port to be operational. The Port of Alaska is one of 18
Department of Defense seaports, and all of the fuel needed for the
defense department to patrol northern borders comes through the port.
About 20% of the goods that pass through the port are for the
Department of Defense, said Jager.
With the proposed microgrid, Jager wants
to address safety and economic issues for the port. For example, if an
outage occurs when there’s an incoming tide and the port is using an
electric crane to offload containers, the crane might get tangled up
in the ship if the tide is high.
But more important – a possibility that
keeps Jager up at night – is the risk of Alaska’s entire “railbelt
grid” going down. The grid is about the size of a small midwestern
utility’s and extends over 500 miles, traveling over mountain ranges
and glaciers. The grid relies on natural gas, and a gas shortage could
cause an outage.
“We need a backup that keeps the grid
functioning,” he said.
A microgrid with storage could help level
the load and reduce demand charges. And it could allow the port to
isolate from the local utility, Chugach Electric, during an outage.
What stands in the way of more
microgrids
But the port faces regulatory and
economic challenges to getting a microgrid deployed.
State regulations prevent the port from
aggregating its tenants’ meters. Those tenants include a cement mixing
operation with high peak loads. Right now, the tenants have their own
separate meters. But Jager wants to aggregate the meters so that he
has a big-picture view of demand and then offer incentives for tenants
to cut their usage during peak hours.
“We need a mechanism to aggregate the
port’s loads and incentivize each individual player to use power more
efficiently when other people aren’t using their power,” he said.
In addition, Jager wants the microgrid to
pay for itself. That would involve “harvesting” the benefits and
allocating them appropriately. The port could possibly get federal
grants for the project, but, as a municipal agency, it can’t take
advantage of tax credits. Bringing in a third party that could take
advantage of tax credits is one option, he said.
Jager doesn’t want to be in charge of
operating the battery so Chugach Electric or another player could
possibly do that, he said.
“The good news is that it’s all doable,”
he said.
Augmenting the “small and
sketchy” grid
![](images/images_05_31_2022/pic2.jpg)
Tesla batteries, photo courtesy
Homer Electric
Meanwhile, Homer Electric now has a
microgrid to help address the high cost of spinning reserves, said
David Thomas, director of strategic services for the electric
cooperative.
Homer is one of five electric
cooperatives that make up the “small and sketchy” Alaskan grid, he
said. The cooperatives each have their own generation, and each
carries a little more capacity than what’s needed at all times. Homer
Electric has this extra capacity available from two combined-cycle
natural gas plants and a hydropower facility.
In 2019, the utility had to island from
the main grid for five months because of wildfires, which meant that
it was isolated from the main grid and had to operate its own spinning
reserves.
“We had to provide our own spinning
reserves, 45 MW. If one unit tripped, the other two could ramp up,”
Thomas said. But that means the utility was running two combustion
turbines instead of one, which was inefficient. In fact, it cost
$1,000 an hour of additional fuel usage for five months.
“When islanded we use a lot more fuel to
provide spinning reserves but a battery can sit there charged and
ready to jump in,” said Thomas.
The utility now has a Tesla Megapack that
provides 46.5 MW, which cost $41 million and “saves the day” during
outages by helping the utility avoid the extra costs of natural gas.
It also helps Homer Electric integrate renewables. The battery can
fill in when there’s a cloud cover.
“We will make the money back when there’s
an outage,” said Thomas.
200+ independent microgrids in
Alaska
Meanwhile, Alaska has more than 200
remote power systems, most of them diesel-based, said Roys. They’re
all independent microgrids. At least 20 have installed storage, and
some have added renewable energy, including Shungnak, a
9.6-square-mile community of about 300 people in a region where
temperatures can drop to 40 below zero.
The Shungnak
community now relies less on diesel by using a 225-kW solar array
and a 32-kWh battery system. A microgrid controller with a “diesels
off” function allows for automatic coordination between the solar and
energy storage as well as communication with the diesel plant about
the best times to turn off the diesel.
Such projects are helping Alaska move
away from oil and invest in renewables, which represent a wealth
creation opportunity for the state, said CEO of Launch Alaska Issac
Vanderburg in the organization’s 2020 annual report.
“That’s because Alaska’s unique
geography, history, natural resources and our decades of experience as
an energy state positions us well to be a leader, not a victim, of the
global energy transition,” he said.
Read more about
microgrids in Alaska.
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
Spokane, Washington. 99212
www.exactrix.com
509 995 1879 cell, Pacific.
exactrix@exactrix.com
|