What Alaska Can Teach the World About Renewable Energy
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David W. Shaw, Alaska Dispatch News
I flew into Unalakleet, Alaska, on a late fall day. With about 700 people, Unalakleet is large by rural Alaska standards and serves as a regional hub. The village is located on a sandy spit of land where a clear river meets the turbid water of the Bering Sea. Out the plane window the sun shone bright, glittering off the wind-tossed whitecaps of the sea. To the east, the rolling Nulato Hills, clad in autumn foliage, provided a picturesque backdrop. As the small plane banked for our approach, a row of wind turbines appeared atop a ridge. Installed in 2009 they are among the numerous renewable power installations that have popped up across rural Alaska in the past decade.
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Juneau, where I live, has 100% renewable hydro power. We power company does have back-up generators for those occasions where the lines from the hydro plants are down. That happened several years ago when avalanches knocked down about a mile of line and several transmission towers. Took about 6 weeks to get the repairs completed. The power company fired up all 6 diesel generators and burned 15,000 gallons of diesel/day to keep the power flowing. Of course the consumers had to pay a “surcharge” to pay for the diesel. The surcharge brought the cost up to $0.50/KWH. Funny part of the situation was that, with the higher cost, electricity consumption declined 30% making the period of increased rates much longer.