Grant slated for electrifying unserved areas

MAT-SU -- Outlying areas of the Mat-Su Borough may be eligible for electrical service as early as next spring through Matanuska Electric Association Inc. (MEA), thanks to a $750,000 appropriation tacked on to Senate Bill 29, the Senate's capital appropriations bill.

The grant, administered through the Department of Community and Economic Development under the Alaska Industrial Development and Economic Authority (AIDEA)'s Alaska Energy Authority, essentially gives MEA carte blanche to provide electrical service to presently unserved areas.

"This is an unusual grant for MEA to receive," MEA spokesman Michael Pauley said Friday. "Nobody [on present staff] can remember a time when we've got an unrestricted grant for line extensions."

Pauley said the public utility has previously received grants for specific projects, but the appropriation, which was obtained largely through the efforts of state Sen. Lyda Green, R-Mat-Su, will allow MEA to extend service to a number of areas that may not otherwise be put on the grid. Green, in a release issued by MEA in September, said that was what she was hoping for.

"Expanding the utility grid is a critical requirement for both economic development and quality of life in Mat-Su," Green said. "MEA serves the fastest-growing area in Alaska, and it is an ongoing challenge for our utilities to keep pace with that growth. This new funding will not meet all the needs that exist, but it is a big step in the right direction."

Pauley echoed Green's sentiments that the money, although appreciated, is just the beginning of what is needed.

"The truth of the matter is, we could spend $7 million and still not meet the needs that are out there," he said.

In order to ensure that the utility makes the most of the money it was given -- and in order to reach an agreement with the grant committee -- Pauley said MEA staff had to come up with a balanced way to gauge where the most pressing need was, as well as find the most cost-effective projects.

The first step in the project, Pauley said, was to define exactly what an unserved area was.

A subcommittee set up to assist in the preliminary planning process concluded that anyone living more than a quarter-mile from existing distribution lines was considered "unserved." Those within the quarter-mile radius are considered served.

As a result, borough residents who live a quarter-mile or more outside MEA's existing electrical service area have until Dec. 14 to submit an application requesting electrical service in their area. That date was recently extended from Nov. 30, Pauley said, to allow applicants more time during the busy holiday season.

After the applications are in, they will be plotted out on a map, Pauley said, and MEA engineers will map out hypothetical backbone lines to see how the service could best be extended.

Once the lines are plotted, Pauley said information will be sent out to the applicants, stating the utility's findings. The letters, Pauley said, will essentially say MEA would like to build a line extending electricity to the property in question, what information they have obtained about where the line may run and how much connecting to it would cost. MEA, he said, would pay for any connections up to 330 feet from the main distribution line. The potential customer, he said, would be responsible for the cost of extending the line beyond that 330 feet.

The potential customers will be asked to sign a conditional contract that states they will commit to hooking up if the electrical line is extended in their area. After the conditional contracts come back, Pauley said, it becomes a numbers game.

"It's obviously the total cost of production divided by the number of people [who commit] to be served," Pauley said.

That, he said, will be the best use of the grant money -- for the utility to be able to say at the end, "We connected the greatest number of additional people to the [grid]."

Pauley said people who have already applied for electrical service and who live a quarter-mile or more from the existing distribution line will be included in the pool of applicants, and need not resubmit their information.

Many of the applications that have already been received, he added, come from areas MEA has long had on the horizon for electrical service -- areas such as Deshka Landing, Buffalo Mine Road, Seventeen-mile Lake, Montana Creek and other areas. But there is still no guarantee that the funding will cover service at those areas, as the projects will depend on the formula Pauley mentioned above.

But MEA is hoping its performance on this project will remind the Legislature of the challenges posed by the Valley's growing population, and encourage more grant funding in the future.

"We're definitely making a concerted effort to . . . try to get more funding in the future," Pauley said. "It's provoked a process where we will basically have the engineering completed -- it's a very useful process. [And with engineering data available] we will go out and try to shake the trees for more money."