High-voltage power lines under construction

PALMER — They’re over 70 feet tall and carry two types of electricity. And through March, Matanuska Electric Association’s newest power poles will be going up along a route stretching from Eklutna to Trunk Road.

“We actually have had a large crane back there driving piling since Jan. 1,” said Jason Hodges, vice president of Northern Powerline Construction Inc.

Hodges said that it’s been a rough winter to be in the power line game. There aren’t a lot of roads along the route the lines follow, mostly just railroads. So the company waited until winter and built its own roads.

“We had actually constructed 6 miles of ice road and we all but lost the entire ice road during the warm spell that we had,” Hodges said.

His guys have to be off of the Palmer Hay Flats by March, and it’s going to be close.

But it’s a big project. Transmission lines like the ones that will be strung atop these poles aren’t built often in Alaska. They’re needed, in this case, to run power into the grid from the Eklutna Generation Station — the power plant MEA is building.

There are two circuits of high-voltage transmission lines, each carrying 115,000 volts. The lower distribution lines are 12,500 volts. Distribution lines are the kind that bring power to homes and businesses. Hodges said the line powers things for the railroad and lights on the nearby highway.

Overall, the project will require 96 poles and then another 10 to 20 on the site of the power plant. Hodges said those poles measure between 70 and 105 feet tall.

Julie Estey, spokeswoman for MEA, said the project is necessary to meet the increased electrical demands of residents in the core area. She said that the transmission lines will go live when the new power plant goes online Jan. 1, 2015.

The power plant, MEA has said in the past, represents a new era for the cooperative, one in which it is creating most of the power it uses rather than buying it from other utilities. The contract MEA has with Chugach Electric runs out at the end of 2014.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.