POWER September 2013 - 44

TOP PLANTS
Southcentral Power Project,
Anchorage, Alaska
Owners: Chugach Electric Association Inc. and Anchorage Municipal Light & Power
Operator: Chugach Electric Association Inc.
The Southcentral Power Project is Alaska's third-largest power plant and its most
fuel-efficient. By employing a high-efficiency, one-button-start combined cycle design,
the plant owners wisely use the region's limited supply of natural gas while
also reducing fuel cost and air emissions.
By Dr. Robert Peltier, PE
A
laska's vast land mass broken up
by mountainous regions and glacier
fields does not allow for a tightly
woven system of power transmission and distribution
often taken for granted in the Lower
48. Many utilities in the Last Frontier often
serve regions or communities without interconnection
with other utilities that can provide
backup power during outages that can
quickly become life-threatening. The same
can be said for the state's natural gas pipeline
network.
Chugach Electric Association Inc.
(Chugach) is the largest cooperative utility
in Alaska. Based in Anchorage, the utility
provides wholesale and retail power
to customers in southcentral Alaska, from
the Kenai Peninsula to the south and as far
north as Fairbanks. Anchorage Municipal
Power & Light (MP&L) provides service
to commercial and industrial customers in
downtown Anchorage and to the north toward
the Matanuska Valley. Platforms and
drill sites located in and around the Cook
Inlet produce the natural gas used to fuel
their power plants.
44
Where's the Gas?
Natural gas is the primary fuel for electricity
production in southcentral Alaska. The most
pressing concern for utilities in the region is
an assured supply of natural gas, particularly
during the cold and dark winter nights. Well
depletion in the Cook Inlet and the limited
interest of large gas companies to invest in
new wells only increases the risk of dwindling
supplies in the future. Also, upstream
outages have caused disruption of natural gas
deliveries in the past. The only options available
to these geographically isolated utilities
were to store natural gas to mitigate the effect
of an upstream outage or peak usage, build
a new pipeline to supply current and anticipated
needs, import gas, and/or use the gas
available today more efficiently. Chugach
and ML&P have completed the two tasks that
are under their control.
A consortium of energy companies, including
Chugach and ML&P, added gas storage
to their system by repurposing a depleted
natural gas reservoir on the Kenai Peninsula
in April 2012. The Cook Inlet Natural Gas
Storage Alaska (CINGSA) provided gas durwww.powermag.com
ing
several cold days last December when
local demand exceeded what the gas wells
could provide.
Constructing a new gas pipeline from the
North Slope to Anchorage has been the subject
of contentious debate in the state since
the 1970s, when the Trans-Alaska Pipeline
System was constructed. Alaska has enormous
volumes of natural gas in the frozen
North Slope, but it's very expensive to get the
gas to market. Legislators in May 2013 approved
funding for the development of two
pipeline options to bring North Slope gas to
southcentral Alaska by 2020.
The third option is to use the available
gas more efficiently. In response to the gas
crunch, Chugach began planning for a new,
high-efficiency combined cycle plant in
2004, now known as the Southcentral Power
Project (SPP). The best location for the new
plant was determined to be on Chugach property
adjacent to the Ted Stevens Anchorage
International Airport.
Focus on Efficiency
Chugach (70%, and managing participant)
POWER | September 2013
Courtesy: SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.
http://www.powermag.com
POWER September 2013

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