Alaska Electric Light and Power Company\u2019s new diesel generation plant will offer more reliable backup power for Mendenhall Valley residents, but that security comes at a cost.<\/p>\n
During the Juneau Chamber of Commerce\u2019s weekly luncheon Thursday, AEL&P President Tim McLeod said that the company will seek a rate increase to cover the cost of the $22 million plant.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of our infrastructure investments impact our rates down the road,\u201d McLeod said. \u201cThere will be some inflation.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the luncheon, McLeod told the Empire that AEL&P will file for a rate increase with Regulatory Commission of Alaska at some point in the next few months. McLeod said he doesn\u2019t yet know how much rates will increase in response to the sizeable infrastructure investment \u2014 roughly double what the company typically spends on infrastructure most years.<\/p>\n
But he does know that the company won\u2019t seek as steep an increase as it did in 2010 when rates went up by about 20 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt won\u2019t be anywhere near the level that it was last time,\u201d McLeod said.<\/p>\n
Rate increase aside, McLeod and AEL&P project manager Bryan Farrell said that the new plant, which is located off of Industrial Boulevard, is good news for Juneau residents, particularly those who live in the valley.<\/p>\n
Even after the new 25 megawatt diesel plant is completed this fall, the company still plans to hold true to its slogan: \u201c100 percent hydro 99 percent of the time.\u201d The diesel plant will function strictly as a backup power source in the event that something, such as an avalanche, causes the valley to be cut off from the hydropower lines, which for the most part run into town from south of Thane.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn winter, when our loads are at their peak, if we had any sort of long-term outage we could not pick up all of the valley,\u201d Farrell told the luncheon crowd, which filled the Moose Lodge dining area Thursday. This plant will fix that.<\/p>\n
Though it has the ability to power the entirety of the valley, which is where more than half of Juneau\u2019s residents live, the plant will only run between 100 and 200 hours per year, according to Farrell who is also a generation engineer for the company.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to maintain backup resources, and those resources have to be in town,\u201d McLeod said during the luncheon. \u201cEvery part of our electric system has the potential to \u2014 and probably will \u2014 fail at some point, so we have to plan for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
AEL&P began air-quality monitoring, an important regulatory step, for the new plant five years ago. It purchased the land the plant sits on three years ago, and it began construction in January. The plant should be operational by the end of October, Farrell said.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alaska Electric Light and Power Company\u2019s new diesel generation plant will offer more reliable backup power for Mendenhall Valley residents, but that security comes at a cost. During the Juneau Chamber of Commerce\u2019s weekly luncheon Thursday, AEL&P President Tim McLeod said that the company will seek a rate increase to cover the cost of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":17832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17831"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}