One big utility plan has admirers

PALMER — There’s movement afoot to tie closer together utilities from Homer to Fairbanks.

But exactly who’s running the show and what their game plan is remains to be seen.

Matanuska Electric Association’s Tuckerman Babcock said he was at a meeting Wednesday of the Regulatory Commission of Alaska in Anchorage during which they discussed an MEA-sponsored plan.

“All the generation power plants and all the transmission-level lines would be managed by one entity,” Babcock said, summarizing the plan.

That would leave the local utilities — MEA, Chugach Electric Association, Golden Valley Electric Association and the rest — in the role of bringing power from the big transmission lines through smaller distribution lines and selling it to customers.

“We would all be, as MEA is basically today, distribution cooperatives,” Babcock said. “That is how the co-ops operate in the rest of the United States . . . Most cooperatives are distribution cooperatives that join together and create a generation and transmission cooperative.”

But at the same time that the RCA is looking at MEA’s proposal, the Legislature and the governor are looking at the same idea — tying the utilities in the Railbelt together.

“We have not seen the legislation from the administration yet. We’re very hopeful that it will be more than window dressing,” Babcock said.

And there’s also a third option — the utilities could decide to do it themselves. The various general managers have been meeting amongst themselves for sometime.

“So far, though we continue to meet almost weekly, there is not unanimous opinion,” Babcock said.

Babcock said that at the end of the meeting Wednesday the RCA said it would wait until the legislature’s plan comes through before moving forward on MEA’s plan.

If the legislature doesn’t act and if the co-ops don’t do it on their own, Babcock said the RCA has stated it will have to move forward on MEA’s plan.

Whatever the case, Babcock said it’s an interesting time to be in the power business. One of the RCA commissioners, he said, described the current moment as a “once in a generation opportunity” for Alaska’s biggest utilities to come together.

“It’s pretty exciting,” Babcock said.

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