MEA chief worries about power in the future

PALMER — Joe Griffith has been interim general manager of the Matanuska Electric Association for a little over a month now.

A former chief executive officer and chief financial officer for Chugach Electric Association, he comes to the co-op on the heels of a protracted, contentious and ultimately successful effort by the co-op’s board of directors to oust former general manager Wayne Carmony.

Add to that MEA’s efforts to build its own power plant and worries over the supply of natural gas to Southcentral Alaska and, to put it mildly, Griffith has his work cut out for him. Thursday, he sat down for an interview between meetings.

Q: How have you found your first few weeks as general manager?

A: It’s been quite enjoyable and interesting and I think rewarding.

It’s sort of like coming home. The issues are still the same, only of much greater magnitude.

Q: When people hear the title “interim general manager” oftentimes the word “caretaker” comes to mind. What’s your take on that?

A: The board probably had a little “caretaker” in mind. I insisted on the title. I didn’t want them to think I was coming in with a long-term job in mind.

I told them, “It will be interim until you’re tired of me and we have somebody that can replace me.”

Q: You’ve spoken in the past about great challenges facing the electrical co-ops in Alaska. What are some of those challenges?

A: The biggest one is the energy supply in Cook Inlet. Chugach’s gas supplies can’t meet the needs in about 2014. And that’s even before MEA’s contract (to buy power from Chugach) runs out.

And then there’s infrastructure. The generators that other people have, some of them are 50 years old.

We’ve got an issue of how to deal with state government.

There’s the problem of finances. Today, the financial markets would probably laugh at any of us that walked in asking for a large loan.

Can you find qualified educated people that you don’t have to educate yourself? We have, all of us, not just us here at MEA, kicked the can down the road for so long that we’ve forgotten how to do these things.

Q: There has been a lot of talk in energy circles about a large hydroelectric project. Some seem to see this as a silver-bullet to solve Southcentral’s energy problems. Is it?

A: It sort of is a silver bullet. Had we done the Susitna that we talked about in the mid-’80s we would be having a much different discussion.

I look at hydro as something we clearly need to think about, but it’s clearly bigger than any of the utilities.

Do I like hydro? You bet I do. But hydro is very hard to permit for, it’s very expensive on the front end.

Q: What about MEA plans for a natural gas-fired power plant at Eklutna?

A: I’ve got our people here looking at it and trying to figure out if we really want to take on the whole kit and caboodle ourselves.

Another question is whether all of MEA’s generation facilities should go there. It may be that you want a piece of generation at Eklutna and a piece someplace else.

We’re worried about the gas supply in the future and this winter. We simply have to be able to deal with an interruption in that supply. I think we’re definitely going to put dual-fuel machinery (that can run on natural gas or on gasoline or another liquid fuel) in there.

Q: Couldn’t it be argued that if the state’s efforts to build a pipeline from the North Slope are successful the natural gas problem will be solved?

A: I call it the “sigh of relief syndrome.”

You get the state folks running around talking about bullet lines and all that stuff and people think, ‘OK, someone’s got that covered,” when in reality nothing’s happened.

You’ve got to have enough gas to do it. You can’t use the utilities alone to generate that demand.

And the utilities have to advocate for themselves. There is no one that’s going to step up and say, “We’re taking care of utilities in Southcentral.”

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