A significant amount of misinformation is being spread about Matanuska Electric Association's new power generation plans.
Recent opinion pieces in this newspaper, which have had more than one misrepresentation, deserve a response and clarification.
The Mat-Su area is the only major population center in Alaska's Railbelt without enough generation to provide for its current needs, let alone those of the future. Positioning generation facilities in our service territory will improve reliability, reduce costs for our members, and provide greater stability for the entire Railbelt electrical system.
Locating generation facilities in remote areas greatly increases costs for MEA members, because of the need to construct expensive transmission lines to transport the electricity to the end-users. Transmission lines can cost anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million per mile. Long transmission lines also place the system at a greater risk of outages.
MEA has a legal obligation to provide reliable and affordable electrical service. To meet this obligation, MEA must have access to generation resources that are capable of meeting both base and peak load requirements.
In order to meet the base load of our members, MEA needs to generate 200 megawatts (mw) of electricity. Base load refers to customer demand for power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Peak load is the maximum power requirement of a system at a given time, or the amount of power required to supply customers at times when need is greatest.
The consultants, CH2M Hill, were hired to thoroughly research possible sources of new generation. CH2M Hill determined that a 100-mw coal plant and a 100-mw natural gas plant would provide the most reliable and cost-effective means of power.
One of the greatest myths about the proposed 100-mw coal plant is that the emissions will cripple the environment. The type of coal plant planned by MEA will not depend on the primitive technology that gave coal such a bad reputation.
New "clean coal" technology uses a process called "circulating fluidized bed," or CFB, that significantly reduces emissions. By using CFB clean coal technology MEA will reduce emissions by about 83 percent compared to coal plants not using this technology.
MEA's plant will be far more advanced than most of the coal generation plants in the U.S. today. The CFB technology greatly reduces the emissions from the plant, allowing MEA to meet the stringent federal and state standards. The CFB plant can also utilize biomass products, such as woody crops and waste paper, which further reduces emissions.
As many people are already aware, MEA currently purchases all of its power from Chugach Electric Association. The cost of Chugach electricity is too high, and the reliability is too low. Chugach has a long record of pursuing rate increases over MEA's opposition.
In a typical year, over 30 percent of the outage hours on MEA's system are caused by problems on the Chugach system. It has been MEA's experience that whenever there is a widespread, regional disturbance on the Railbelt electric system, MEA's service territory (Mat-Su and Chugiak-Eagle River) is the first area to be dropped from the system, and the last to get power restored. Having our own generation resources located within MEA's service area will reduce costs and greatly improve reliability.
One question that is consistently part of our new generation discussions is whether MEA can solely rely on natural gas generators. The available supply of natural gas in Cook Inlet is dwindling, and this lack of supply has been the primary driver behind recent increases in both electric and home heating bills over the last few years.
MEA expects that new exploration in the Cook Inlet area and/or a gas spur line coming from the North Slope will ensure that some gas will continue to be available, but the cost is likely to remain high compared to coal.
MEA's plan is to meet its base load requirements with the clean-coal generator, and utilize the natural gas unit only when necessary to meet peak loads. Thus, natural gas is an important part of MEA's resource mix.
However, MEA believes it would be irresponsible to be 100 percent reliant on natural gas due to its high price and uncertainties about future supply.
Lorali Carter is manager of government and corporate communications for Matanuska Electric Association Inc.
