RCA schedules 3 electric system meetings

Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

Ahead of preparing a report to the state Legislature on progress towards a more unified approach to managing the Railbelt electrical system, the Regulatory Commission of Alaska has scheduled three public meetings to review voluntary efforts by the Railbelt electric utilities to achieve some acceptable level of unification.

The electrical system is owned and operated by six independent utilities, with the state of Alaska also owning a sector of the electricity transmission grid. The balkanized nature of the system ownership and operation leads to inefficiencies in terms of how the system as a whole operates. And that impacts the cost of electricity.

In June 2015, following a directive from the Legislature, the RCA issued a series of recommendations for a more unified approach to the operation of the Railbelt electrical system. Since then the commission has been encouraging a voluntary approach to resolving the various unification issues. The three meetings that the RCA has now scheduled address progress to date in three components of the unification conundrum.

A meeting on Sept. 26 will address progress towards establishing a unified operator to oversee the management of the Railbelt transmission system. An Oct. 10 meeting will address progress towards establishing merit based economic dispatch on the electrical grid, an arrangement whereby continuous use is made of the cheapest available electricity generation and also will review moves toward establishing a transmission company to operate the grid. And an Oct. 24 meeting will review progress towards implementing a single set of mandatory reliability standards for the grid, including standards that address cyber security. This meeting will also review the possibility of incorporating the standards into state regulations.

- ALAN BAILEY