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Denali funds Yukon River hydropower
Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Alaska Power Co. has announced that the Denali Commission has awarded a $1.6 million grant to support the company’s planned 100-kilowatt “hydrokinetic” turbine power plant in the Yukon River, to supply electricity to the City of Eagle and the nearby Eagle Village. Situated close to where the Yukon crosses the border between Alaska and Canada and with a combined population of 200, the two communities currently depend on expensive diesel-generated electricity.
APC is a subsidiary of Alaska Power & Telephone Co., a major provider of energy and communications services in rural Alaska.
“The funding of Alaska’s first river turbine project signals willingness by the Denali Commission to solidify a role in promoting the development of renewable resource energy in Alaska,” said Ben Beste, Alaska Power & Telephone’s lead project engineer.
The planned river-powered plant will displace the use of up to 57,000 gallons of diesel fuel per year and should be in operation by the fall of 2008, APC says. A three-year evaluation of the plant will then enable an assessment of the use of the new in-stream turbine technology for electricity generation in communities throughout Alaska and elsewhere.
Renewable resource “Research, design and advancement of sites conducive to low-impact renewable resource energy is a primary focus,” said APC President Robert Grimm. “To take a leadership role in the development of this technology is a natural extension of our vision as an employee-owned company and a practical opportunity to minimize our threshold of energy production related greenhouse gas emissions in the field.”
APC says that it has been working for several years with UEK Corp. of Annapolis, Md., to adapt UEK in-stream turbine technology for operation in the Yukon River at Eagle. UEK turbines have positive buoyancy and are tethered to the water bottom, so that they can float like underwater kites.
The conceptual design for the installation at Eagle envisages a two-turbine generator unit. The power cable from the unit to the shore will pass through a directionally drilled hole under the riverbed, Grimm told Petroleum News.
APC says that it has secured permits from the U.S. Corps of Engineers and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources for the Eagle project and that the company has funded site feasibility studies and the permitting work. The company already operates conventional, low-impact hydroelectric plants on Prince of Wales Island and in the Skagway-Haines area of Southeast Alaska, APC says.
The Denali Commission is a federal-state partnership that channels federal funding into improving Alaska’s rural infrastructure.
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