According to Ashley Bradish, GVEA’s Director of External Affairs and Public Relations, the utility has not been able to purchase what they call “economy energy” from Southcentral since February 2024.
“That’s natural-gas-powered electricity from the southcentral utilities,” she said.
Before then, GVEA was primarily purchasing that energy from Chugach Electric Association, and occasionally from Matanuska Electric Association and Homer Electric Association.
In addition, GVEA’s contract with Enstar to purchase natural gas is scheduled to end on Jan. 23, and with it, the 20 megawatts of power coming from that source.
According to Bradish, Enstar could not renew its contract with GVEA due to the ongoing shortage of gas in Cook Inlet, which created uncertainty on supply when compared to user demand. Potential contracts are still being discussed, as Enstar considers future gas suppliers.
However, for these reasons, GVEA does not expect to have any natural gas-powered electricity for the foreseeable future, when in 2023, it made up about 17.5% of the utility’s power mix, dipping to 10% last year.
Making up for this shortfall, Bradish said GVEA’s coal units in Healy are producing more power, as are the utility’s diesel units.
Meanwhile, construction is currently happening to a transmission line on the Kenai Peninsula, cutting off the utility’s access to another 20 megawatts of power from Bradley Lake Hydropower for the first quarter of 2025, according to Bradish.
These combined factors, according to GVEA, eliminate some resources used to prevent outages, a situation the utility alerted its members about on Jan. 13.
The notification clarifies that these losses alone do not impact GVEA’s ability to meet the needs of its members, and they do not anticipate power disruptions.
Bradish said, “Our optimistic hope is that there will be no impact. We don’t expect to have any power interruptions. This is purely informational. It’s precautionary and we just want to be transparent with our membership.”
However, the utility is also asking those who use GVEA to be prepared in case steps need to be taken in the future to meet their needs if power demand exceeds supply.
One potential scenario is called a “controlled load shed program,” and would involve turning off the power for different grids in a rotating pattern, for a period of 30 minutes to one hour each.
“We’re talking about a worst-case scenario if we were to lose multiple generation units at a time, where we might have to end up in a controlled load shed program,” said Bradish.
However, she explained that before this option is utilized, GVEA would reach out to industrial users to see if they could spare some time without power to take the brunt of the shortage.
“We would work with our large industrial members with our largest loads to see what they can curtail on their end in order to mitigate or reduce the impact to our larger system, potentially even not having to run this program,” Bradish said.
She discussed actions being taken to mitigate the risk, saying, “Our board is currently in the strategic planning process. That’s for our entire company, but generation is certainly a large portion of that planning process, to see what, you know, what steps can be taken to really mitigate this, fortifying and kind of hardening our existing assets to make sure that these unexpected outages become less and less and less likely.”
It is unclear at this point when natural gas could rejoin GVEA’s list of power supplies.
As far as hydropower, according to Bradish, construction at this time of year is expected at the Kenai Peninsula transmission line for the next seven to ten years.
Meanwhile, members are not expected to see an impact on their monthly electric bills, as these situations and expectations have already been factored into the current fuel and purchased power rate.
GVEA is asking its members to be prepared for potential outages by among other things, making sure their phone is adequately charged and having an emergency kit ready.
