Economy

Alaska Electric Light and Power says the cost of the diesel fuel burned during last week’s Snettisham outage is about $430,000, or one-half cent per kilowatt hour.

The hydroelectric project went off line Thursday morning and was back on Saturday afternoon. During that time, AEL&P supplemented with diesel, burning 130,000 gallons, says generation engineer Scott Willis.

Beginning in January, the cost will be spread across commercial and residential consumers in the routine quarterly Cost of Power Adjustment. At an average residential use of 750 kilowatt hours of electricity a month, Willis says the increase will be about $3.75 each month for the first three months of 2012.

Without the Lake Dorothy project, the two and a half-day outage would have cost users even more, Willis says. The company generated about 50 percent of Juneau’s electricity from hydro and the other 50 percent from diesel. Lake Dorothy mainly serves the Greens Creek Mine, until it’s needed in town.

“As soon as Snettisham tripped off line, Greens Creek tripped off line and we did not bring them back on until Snettisham power was restored,” Willis says. That was the same situation with AEL&P’s dual fuel customers, he says.

“All of our hydro was devoted to our firm customers in town. And that saved us about 70,000 gallons of diesel fuel, which saved the community about $250,000,” he says.

The anchor bolts for two guy wires failed, causing one pole of a three-pole structure to lean into the center pole. Willis says the company is still investigating the cause of the broken anchors. He says crews added a level of security during the fix.

“So there’s three anchors and guy wires holding the tower, where before there was two. We’ve tried to improve the situation so there won’t be as much stress on the existing anchors,” he said.

Willis says additional work will be done next summer to drill new anchors.

Alaska Electric Light and Power’s Snettisham hydroelectric facility was back in service by mid-afternoon on Saturday, after a Thanksgiving Day power outage.

The workhorse of AEL&P’s generation system was turned back on about 2:30 p.m., two and a half-days after anchor bolts for tower guy wires failed and a tower leaned on a conductor, causing the outage.

Generation engineer Scott Willis says it’s not clear what caused the anchor bolts to fail. He says the tower was not damaged.

“So that tower leaned over and the conductor that tower was carrying –- the big wire that was carrying the electrical power — touched the guy wire of the tower next door—just downhill from it and that’s what shorted things out,” Willis says.

Estimated time of repairs had been three to seven days. But a repair crew was at the site late Friday afternoon; when equipment arrived the next day, the work went quickly, Willis says.

During the Snettisham outage, the company turned on back-up diesel generators. Willis says he began shutting off the diesel as soon as Snettisham was on line. Due to the Lake Dorothy project, he says the company was still able to draw nearly half of Juneau’s power from hydroelectric.

“Lake Dorothy was the key to keeping the amount of diesel generation lower. During the Snettisham outage, AELP was pulling 40 percent from hydro at peak times of the day.” Willis says power generation would have only been about 15 percent hydro without Lake Dorothy.

Willis says the cost of diesel used will not show up in customers’ bills for a couple of months. It will be spread out over a three-month period and covered in the routine cost of power adjustment. Though he doesn’t yet know the amount of the diesel surcharge, he expects it will be very small.

Meanwhile, a snow slide was NOT the cause of last week’s outage. The tower is not in the Snettisham avalanche zone.

For the third winter, AEL&P’s avalanche forecasting program is in place. The company has hired an avalanche specialist, who looks at snow conditions throughout the day, and when needed a snow-control crew brings down small slides before the snow builds up.

November 26, 2011 11:18 pm update
Alaska Electric Light and Power’s Snettisham hydroelectric facility is back in service. 

The workhorse of AELP’s system was turned back on Saturday afternoon at 2:30, two and a half-days after anchor bolts for tower guy wires failed and a tower leaned on a conductor, causing a power outage Thanksgiving morning. 

Generation engineer Scott Willis says he began shutting down diesel generators as soon as the hydro project was on line. 

Willis says it’s not clear what caused the anchor bolts to fail, but it was not an avalanche.

Estimated time of repairs had been three to seven days.

November 24, 2011 5:20 pm
Repairs are expected to take about three to seven days for a set of guy wire anchors for a tower on the Snettisham transmission line.

Two of the anchors failed Thanksgiving morning, causing one pole of a three pole tower structure to lean into another pole. The conductor for the leaning pole touched a guy wire for the middle pole, creating a path to ground and a short that led to the area power outage early yesterday.

Scott Willis of Alaska Electric Light and Power says the outage last from about 6:30 to about 7:45, an hour and fifteen minutes.

Repairs could start as soon as Friday.

Willis says 60-percent of Juneau electricity is being supplied by diesel generation. The other 40-percent from hydroelectric projects like Lake Dorothy, Salmon Creek and Annex Creek facilities.

November 24, 2011 12:15 pm
Alaska Electric Light and Power officials say this morning’s power outage may have been caused by a pair of transmission tower guy wires that broke, eventually causing a phase, or one of the transmission lines to touch another and cause a fault.

The tower was located about three miles from the Snettisham hydroelectric facility. Scott Willis of AEL&P says Tower 3-4 is a three-pole structure that replaced the original single-tower structure at that location. Willis says the original Tower 3-4 was outside of the 2008 avalanche path, but it got pulled down when an adjacent tower got hit by the snowslide.

The uphill pole of the three pole structure for the current Tower 3-4 is supported by four guy wires. Willis says it appears the two uphill guy wires came loose from their concrete anchors. That caused the entire pole to lean over to the middle one and both transmission lines, or conductor cable, touched.

Willis says the tower was not destroyed and none of the conductor was broken.

It is unclear what caused the guy wires to separate from their anchors, whether it was wind, a tree, or a small avalanche that was not immediately visible. It is also unclear how much damage there was to the tower poles.

A line crew surveyed the transmission line during a helicopter flight over the area this morning. More details will be available later after they return to town.

Willis says the one question that everyone asks is whether this means that rates will be going up. Probably not. Willis says repairs will likely last a few days to a week at most. That probably would not be long enough to trigger an Emergency Cost Of Power Adjustment. Any use of diesel generators this week will likely be a small surcharge added to next quarter’s rates.

Willis says hydroelectric projects like Lake Dorothy, Salmon Creek, and Annex Creek are currently providing about 40-percent of the current demand for electricity.

November 24, 2011 7:53 am
Alaska Electric Light and Power reports an areawide power outage this morning that lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes. Electricity went out about 6:30 a.m. with all areas restored about 7:45 a.m.

AEL&P generation engineer Scott Willis says it appears the outage was caused by a fault on the transmission line between the Snettisham and Lake Dorothy hydroelectric projects. He says a helicopter is already being prepared for a first-light survey of the transmission line to determine the nature of the fault.

Juneau’s electricity is now being supplied by diesel generators with additional power by other in-town hydroelectric facilities like Salmon Creek and Annex Creek. Willis says the Lake Dorothy generator was tripped off, but the line from that project to Juneau appears to be still intact. Lake Dorothy will be used to supplement power to Juneau once the generator comes back on-line.

Check back here later for further updates.

Alaska’s unemployment rate has been lower than the nation’s for exactly three years.

For decades the state’s rate was at least one to two percentage points higher than the rest of the U.S. But that began to change in October of 2008. Now in the third year, Labor Economist Neal Fried said Alaska’s unemployment rate fell below the nation’s unemployment rate and it stayed there for three straight years.

“It’s not an Alaskan story,” said Fried. “It’s more of a national story about how tough that job market and how high that unemployment rate is and it stayed.”

In October of 2011, 7.4 percent of Alaskans were without jobs, compared to 9.0 percent nationwide. The state’s October 2010 rate was 7.9 percent, while the U.S. rate was 9.7 percent.

Unemployment in Juneau was 5 percent, up slightly from September and due to the loss of seasonal jobs.

Alaska and Canadian scientists are among a large group of experts hoping to convince the British Columbia government to study the cumulative impacts of proposed development in the transboundary region.

In a letter sent Tuesday to B.C. Premier Christy Clark, 36 scientists say industrialization spurred by construction of B.C. Hydro’s Northwest Transmission Line threatens the area.

The 287-KV Northwest Transmission Line will stretch 214 miles north from the Skeena substation near Terrace, British Columbia.  The B.C. Hydro project will provide reliable, economical power to communities and resource development.

The power line has touched off what Dr. Jim Pojar of Smithers, B.C. calls a gold rush mentality in the transboundary region.  At least 11 mines, coal-bed methane and 18 hydroelectric projects are proposed for the Canadian side.

“There’s no complete assessment of what could happen if all of them get developed within five or 10 years,” Pojar says.

He is one of the scientists to sign the letter.  They say the Stikine, Iskut and Unuk rivers – important to both sides of the border – are the most vulnerable.  To the north, the scientists believe the Taku River is already threatened by the existing Tulsequah Chief Mine at its B.C. headwaters.

It’s an impressive list of Ph.D.-level scientists.  Dr. Jack Stanford of the University of Montana at Missoula is among them.

“That’s a very broad cross-section of the scientific expertise of the U.S. & Canada,” Stanford says.

He believes it should carry some weight with politicians.

“If it doesn’t it just means the disconnect between science and government is more profound than we think.  We want them to listen to this,” Stanford says.

The scientists’ letter requests a “transparent ecosystem-based approach” for assessing new development in the transboundary watersheds.

Pojar says it’s the sum-total of the projects that have them worried.  While environmental impact statements will be done for individual mines, no one knows the effect of five or ten mines in a region.

A forest ecologist, Pojar has spent a lot of time in the transboundary area. He calls big chunks of the watersheds still “fearsomely wild.”

“This isn’t just another piece of northern bush. Sometimes we who live up north kind of take it for granted, the landscape we live in, but you know on a continental scale this is just incredible,” Pojar says.

The transboundary rivers support all five species of Pacific salmon that sustain Alaska and British Columbia commercial, sport and subsistence fisheries.

Dr. K.V. Koski of Juneau has studied Southeast Alaska’s transboundary rivers, including many years on the Taku.  The Habitat Restoration  Specialist spent 30 years with the National Marine Fisheries Service at the Auke Bay lab.

“All those transboundary rivers basically are the same type of the system and they rely on so much of the woody debris is those areas for forming the habitats, maintaining the channels and the sloughs and things like that,” Koski says.  

He says hundreds of thousands of salmon rear every year in the lower Taku River in Alaska.

“In the Taku the majority of the juveniles actually come downstream from Canadian waters and rear so it’s really important that those habitats are protected,” he says. 

Stanford calls the transboundary rivers the primary salmon-producers of North America.

“And most of them are entirely intact, not influenced by any activity other than harvest of fish and thus they’re the last best places for fish, particularly salmon,” he says.

The B.C.  Environmental Assessment Office is responsible for evaluating mining, energy and transportation projects for the province.  But a recent Auditor General’s report indicates the E-A-O is erratic when it comes to monitoring and enforcement.

If that’s the case, the scientists say, the B.C. government cannot assure environmental protection at the headwaters of the transboundary rivers, or downstream in Alaska.

They say even if only some of the proposed development happens,  it could transform the ecological landscape of the region.

Alaska Native Corporations display a strong ethos of corporate responsibility, according to an anthropologist who studies the organizations.

Tom Thornton is a senior research fellow for Environmental Change and Management at Oxford University. He presented some of his current research yesterday (Tuesday) at Sealaska Heritage Institute’s annual Native American History Month lecture series.

Thornton says Native Corporations make especially interesting subjects for social scientists.

“The big reason is that they are very unique hybrid institutions,” he says. “They’re not like regular corporations, and obviously they are major cultural institutions as well.”

Thornton says the corporate responsibility ethos is evidenced by many of the corporations’ mission statements, which refer to “sustainability.”

“Probably like all corporations, not every Alaska Native Corporation lives up to its ideals and its mission statement. But the fact that they’re articulated with a certain set of values is quite interesting,” Thornton says. “Because we’re all looking for the right model of sustainable development, if that’s not an oxymoron or a non-sequitur. If there is sustainable development, it obviously has to incorporate some key cultural values into it. It can’t just be an economic model.”

Thornton’s current project is looking at how ANCs have transformed institutional relations between Native people, state governments, ecosystems, and economies.

Since the corporations were created by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, they have adapted to changing cultural, economic and political circumstances. He points to Southeast Alaska, where Native people traditionally lived and survived by the ocean. But under ANCSA – where the settlement included land – virtually all Southeast Native Corporations have been or are involved in timber.

“You move from people who were fishermen to forests. There wasn’t a lot of experience at the beginning. This lack of experience led to mistakes, or people taking advantage, and this set a lot of particularly small corporations off to a bad start,” Thornton says. “They either harvested their timber too quickly, they didn’t get a good price for it, or they didn’t really consider their own values in terms of what they really wanted to do with their natural capital to support their cultural capital.”

In some cases Thornton says Native corporations have done well by moving away from natural resource industries, and into businesses like tourism. One example is Huna Totem Corporation’s Icy Strait Point tourist attraction in Hoonah.

“You have 130 people employed by Huna Totem Corporation in tourism. That would seem to be sustainable if you can get one ship per day in there throughout the summer,” he says.

But there’s still a strong desire on the part of ANC leaders to combine traditional ways of living with newer models. Thornton says one Hoonah fisherman suggested to him that they develop niche economies.

“In the summer, you have tourism, major industrial tourism, that is your form of sustainable development. But in the winter and spring, maybe people could still fish there,” he says.

Thornton’s research is still in the preliminary stages. He says it will eventually compare the development of Southeast Native corporations with those in the Bering Straits region.

Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Native American History Month events continue today (Wednesday) with a luncheon to recognize ANCSA at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall.

The lecture series resumes tomorrow (Thursday) with a talk by Tlingit and Haida Central Council President Edward Thomas on the relationships between tribes and corporations.