Fairbanks Chamber Weekly Business Presentation: "Strategic Generation: Powering the Interior Into the Future"

For 76 years, Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA) has reliably delivered electricity to cooperative members across Interior Alaska from Cantwell to Delta Junction through challenging terrain and despite extreme conditions. Safe, reliable, and affordable electricity is essential to the economic vitality of the communities and businesses we serve and to the wellbeing of all members. Recognizing this, GVEA’s board recently adopted a strategic generation plan focused on stabilizing and ultimately lowering the cost of electricity while also reducing carbon emissions – all without sacrificing reliability. This strategic generation plan consists of five major objectives: (1) Installing additional emission control upgrades on Healy Unit 1; (2) Retiring Healy Unit 2; (3) replacing our existing energy storage system (BESS) with a significantly more efficient and larger capacity battery; (4) integrating large-scale wind into the system; and (5) entering into a power purchase agreement for a dedicated supply of energy equivalent to between 30 to 50 MWs delivered up the Alaska Intertie.  

Lowering the cost of energy is critical to the economic future of Interior Alaska and to the state. With the recent passage of the Federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and with the state’s focus and assistance in substantially upgrading transmission and battery storage along the Railbelt, there has never been a better opportunity to achieve meaningful, positive, transformative change, change that will result in lowering the cost of energy and in reducing carbon emissions. GVEA and the other four Railbelt utilities are united in taking collective action to capitalize on these opportunities for the benefit of all communities, members, and businesses along the Railbelt.