By Tim Bradner
Alaska Journal of Commerce

FAIRBANKS — Renewable energy is hot these days, even in Alaska.

Once the domain of visionaries and backyard tinkerers, private firms and investors are now showing serious interest in wind, tidal and geo-thermal power projects in Alaska. It's a sure sign that renewables have gone mainstream.

Another sign: Rural utility managers, a practical and conservative lot — one has to be so in small, remote towns where the temperatures can dip to 40 below and colder — are now keen on anything-but-diesel. In years past, many of these managers treated the notion of windmills on the edge of town with healthy skepticism. No more.

In late April, dozens of small-town utility managers and diesel plant operators gathered in Fairbanks. Wearing jeans and flannel shirts, they mingled with technology company entrepreneurs wearing suits, and the buzz was on.

The occasion was the third Alaska Rural Energy Conference, a gathering sponsored by the Alaska Energy Authority, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the U.S. Department of Energy that is held every 18 months. This year the conference attracted more than 375 attendees.

Part of the conference was devoted to how-to-do-it workshops on utility metering, power pricing and training, but more of it was devoted to new energy technologies.

Sky high fuel costs driving change

One powerful incentive for new forms of energy is the price of conventional diesel fuel, now as high as $7 to $9 a gallon in some outlying Alaska communities.

What has built new confidence in renewable energy, however, is that the early pioneer projects, like windfarms developed by Kotzebue Electric Association beginning in 1995, have proved themselves. Kotzebue's success is being copied in a number of communities, and it is already showing significant savings on diesel fuel.

“The rising costs of diesel has made alternative energy attractive in remote villages, especially wind and wind-diesel hybrid, or combinations of wind and diesel. These are now considered pretty attractive technologies,” said Dennis Witmer, director of the Arctic Energy Technology Development Laboratory at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Chris Rose, executive director of the Renewable Energy Alaska Project, said beside being clean and inexhaustible, renewable energy sources provide stable costs, unlike fuel. “On a 15- to 20-year life cycle, renewable energy is competitive,” he said. Rose's organization works to advance renewable energy in the state.

Government funding is providing a jump-start to renewable energy in Alaska, but the payback is pretty good, state Commerce and Economic Development Commissioner Emil Notti told the Fairbanks conference.

Notti said that state and federal funds invested in renewable energy, including energy-efficiency projects, now offset about 1.2 million gallons a year of diesel that would have been burned.

The cost has been $7.8 million, Notti acknowledged, but with diesel prices at $5 a gallon across much of rural Alaska, that much and more is being saved each year in small communities in funds that otherwise would have been paid out for fuel. Those savings are growing as more renewable projects are built.

Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, which operates local utilities in 52 small communities, now has four wind-power systems operating that supply electricity to six communities, its president, Meera Kohler, told the conference in Fairbanks. Wind has been able to displace 25 to 30 percent of diesel that would have been used in these communities, Kohler said.

Diesel saved can make a critical difference in small rural villages, where opportunities for cash income are limited. With fuel prices as high as they are, about 10 percent of a rural Alaska household income now goes to paying for fuel and power, compared with 2 percent in urban communities, state Rep. Mary Nelson, D-Bethel, told the Fairbanks conference.

“Diesel prices are $7 a gallon in some communities in my district, and I've heard of prices as high as $9 a gallon. It's causing people to think about whether they can afford the fuel to go hunting, and how they'll keep the refrigerator full,” Nelson said.

Privately owned power companies are also getting active in renewable energy. Alaska Power and Telephone Co. is working on what could be one of the nation's first river-turbine projects in Eagle, on the upper Yukon River. The company now has a demonstration project ready but hit bad luck when a federal grant for the project got sidetracked when permits were delayed. The permits are now in hand, and AP&T president Bob Grimm said he could have the turbine in the river this year in Eagle if he can find money to replace the lost federal grant.

“It really pains me to see that river current flowing by, and we're still burning diesel,” Grimm said. AP&T operates utilities in many small Alaska communities, including in Southeast Alaska, where the company has substantial experience with small hydroelectric projects, Grimm said.

Show and tell

The rural energy conference has also become a show-and-tell opportunity for major firms working on larger Alaska projects. The nation's emerging renewable energy industry has been watching Alaska because of the state's emphasis on new energy technologies and progress that has been made.

“You've pioneered the combination of wind and diesel generation in small communities. Alaska is the most advanced in the world in this area,” said Nigel Protter, president of SyncWave Energy Inc., a British Columbia firm working on a wave-energy project near Yakutat.

Technology firms like SyncWave Energy are attracted to Alaska because the state has educated people who are technically capable, a can-do attitude and real needs, given the sky-high costs of diesel fuel in remote communities, Protter told the Fairbanks conference.

Among major technology companies now entering Alaska is EnXco Inc., a major U.S. wind project operator, which has teamed up with Cook Inlet Region Inc. to develop a large wind power project proposed for Fire Island, in Cook Inlet. EnXco and CIRI are also considering participation in a smaller Interior Alaska wind project at Eva Creek, near Healy between Anchorage and Fairbanks, according to Steve Gilbert, Alaska projects manager for EnXco.

Gilbert is a 17-year veteran of Chugach Electric Association and worked extensively on the Fire Island project before joining EnXco.

EnXco operates 3,600 wind turbines in several U.S. locations and is affiliated with EDF Energies Nouvelles, a European firm that develops and operates renewable energy projects in several countries. EnXco and CIRI would most likely own and operate the wind projects, selling the power to the regional utilities.

Ocean Renewable Power Co. LLC, of Tampa, Fla., another firm working on an ocean and tidal power generation project in Alaska, outlined its plan to demonstrate an underwater turbine at a tidal power project in Knik Arm near Anchorage.

Ocean Renewable Power hopes to install a prototype of its turbine generator unit next year, company president Chris Sauer said in Fairbanks. If the turbine works as expected, a larger, commercial-scale tidal project, one of the first in the world, could be in place by 2012, Sauer said.

The turbine generator unit, developed in a consultation agreement with the U.S. Navy, has a technology advantage in that it can generate power from current moving both ways through the unit, Sauer said. This seems ideal for a tidal current application.

The company is working with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough on plans for using the borough's Point MacKenzie dock to support the project, and to assemble components for the project at an industrial site at Point MacKenzie, Sauer said.

Ocean Renewable Power was founded in 2004 to develop tidal and ocean current power systems. The company is looking at several locations in North America but was recently awarded a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission preliminary license for the Knik Arm demonstration project, Sauer said.

SyncWave Energy has developed a device it calls the SyncWave Power Resonator that generates power through the up-and-down movement of small buoys clustered around a generator, company president Protter told the Fairbanks conference.

As ocean swells heave the floats vertically, a mechanical device transfers the motion to the generator. Electricity is sent to shore by undersea cable. The device is all mechanical, includes no hydraulics and requires minimal infrastructure. It uses simple sea-bed mooring and will be low-impact, Protter said.

The small start-up company has tested a prototype of its unit in a wave tank at the University of British Columbia and plans an offshore test of a larger test unit off the British Columbia coast.

A location off Yakutat, where there are regular wave swells of 5 to 20 feet, has been selected for tests of a more advanced unit. A minimum 150-foot water depth is needed, and the unit must be located far enough offshore that there are no effects on waves from the shoreline.

The units to be tested off Yakutat will not be fully commercial, but Scott Newlun, general manager of Yakutat Power Inc., said any new power source would be welcomed in his community. In Yakutat, diesel-generated power now costs 40 cents per kilowatt hour with half of that in the cost of fuel.

Protter said SyncWave Energy envisions larger wave-generation stations farther offshore that could generate power for as low as 5 cents per kilowatt hour.

Tim Bradner can be reached at tim.bradner@alaskajournal.com.