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Alaska Power & Telephone Completes Construction of the Gustavus Intertie
Alaska Power & Telephone Completes Construction of the Gustavus Intertie.
About this update from Alaska Power & Telephone Co.
[{"type":"text","content":"\nAlaska Power & Telephone Company (AP&T) is pleased to announce completion of the Gustavus intertie – a federally-funded project linking the National Park Service’s facilities in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve to clean, renewable energy available from the Falls Creek hydropower project near the community of Gustavus, Alaska. Prior to the intertie, the National Park Service’s only option for electrical power was to self-generate energy at high cost using off-grid diesel generators.\nThis press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211014005912/en/The Falls Creek hydro project in Gustavus, Alaska - now a source of clean energy for Glacier Bay National Park. (Photo: Business Wire)\nThe Falls Creek project is a “low impact,” run-of-the-river hydropower facility built in 2009. It was originally designed to meet the needs of the community of Gustavus, as well as replace diesel generation at off-grid National Park Service facilities. Because the community of Gustavus is an islanded “micro-grid,” additional energy purchases by the Park Service will be a tremendous help in spreading utility fixed costs over a greater of sales base, significantly reducing energy costs for consumers.\n\nAs a result of the project, Gustavus customers can expect to see significant cost-savings on their bills, which will reflect the NPS’s level of energy purchases. All of the benefit of purchases by the NPS flows to energy consumers through a credit applied to the community’s Cost of Power Account. While the exact savings depend upon the National Park Service’s level of energy use, historic pre-COVID data suggests rate decreases could be as high as $0.11 to $0.12 per kWh for residential customers.\n\nIn addition to providing economic relief to energy consumers of Gustavus – a remote community with very high cost of living – the project has tremendously positive environmental impacts. Based on pre-COVID energy consumption levels in the park, the intertie project is conservatively estimated to avoid 38,000 gallons of fuel per year, and by extension 600 tons of carbon dioxide, plus other emissions. This is the equivalent of taking 128 passenger vehicles off the road. (Per US EPA carbon metrics.) The shift to hydropo...