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Chugach reports Fire Island wind success Output from CIRI’s new wind farm near Anchorage has exceeded expectations, caused no problems on Railbelt electricity grid Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Southcentral Alaska utility Chugach Electric Association has reported to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska that the new wind farm on Fire Island, offshore Anchorage, has been delivering more power than was initially modeled. The wind farm, built by Cook Inlet Region Inc., started up in September, with full commercial operation being officially achieved in December. Chugach Electric is the wind farm’s only customer.
Supply diversity
The wind farm delivered an aggregate of 14,779 megawatt hours of electricity to Chugach Electric between January and March of this year, with a total output since August 2012 of 32,818 megawatt hours, the report says. The wind farm meets a relatively modest proportion of Chugach Electric’s total power needs, reported recently to be around 650 megawatt hours per month. However, the facility provides some diversity in the utility’s power generation while reducing demand for natural gas, the primary energy source for power generation in Southcentral Alaska.
Overall, the wind farm has produced about 10 percent more power than had been assumed in the power purchase agreement with Chugach Electric, although it is not yet clear to what extent this higher-than-expected production resulted from normal variations in production conditions, the report says.
There was a significant curtailment of power delivered from the plant in February, primarily because of a rebuilding-related outage of a transmission line from hydroelectric resources on the Kenai Peninsula — in the interests of ensuring stability of power supplies Chugach Electric chose not to use the fluctuating power output from the wind farm when the hydropower was offline, the report says. However, overall curtailments of less than 9 percent of the wind farm’s total output since the farm went into operation have been substantially less than the level of 25 percent assumed in the economic modeling for the farm’s first year of operation, the report says.
No stability issues In the run-up to the signing of Chugach Electric’s purchase agreement for power from the wind farm there was much discussion among the Railbelt utilities about the potential impacts on the stability of the Railbelt grid of wind farm power output that fluctuates with the inevitable, continuous changes in wind strength at Fire Island. There was also concern about the cost of providing power generation capacity within the Railbelt electricity grid to accommodate the fluctuating power.
In the event, there have been no grid stability issues since the wind farm came on line, the report says.
“There have been no generation or transmission-asset-related operational issues as Chugach has received this energy from the (wind farm) project,” the report says. “In particular, Chugach’s generation and transmission assets have not experienced any negative impacts as a result of energy generated by the project, and Chugach is not aware of any such impacts on the generation or transmission assets of any interconnected Railbelt utility.”
Issues resolved The report also says that some technical issues relating to Chugach Electric’s power purchase agreement and with an associated interconnection and integration agreement have now been resolved. Those issues consisted of operational problems with the computer system used to monitor the operation and power output of the wind farm; improperly rated switchgear; and some issues relating to the way in which the submarine power cable connecting the island wind farm to the onshore power grid had been laid.
Following resolution of the issues Chugach Electric has taken title to the submarine transmission line, with Fire Island Wind, a subsidiary of Cook Inlet Region Inc., owning and operating the wind farm.
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