HomeMy WebLinkAbout7 J Idaho Energy Office Nome SupportState of Idaho
DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES
322 East Front Street, P.O. Box 83720, Boise, Idaho 83720-0098
Phone: (208) 287-4800 FAX: (208) 287-6700 www.idwr.idaho.gov
C.L. “BUTCH” OTTER
Governor
DAVID R. TUTHILL, JR.
Director
September 29, 2007
Jerald Brown
Vice President
Bering Straits Native Corporation
PO Box 1008
Nome, Alaska 99762
jbrown@beringstraits.com
RE: Bering Straits Native Corporation wind project proposal to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture High Energy Cost Program
Dear Mr. Brown,
I would like to lend my vote of support for this project in Nome. The state of Idaho is almost in
as bad a shape as rural Alaska in terms of the percent of energy it imports. For Nome, it is
obviously 100% but in Idaho it is still 80%. Fortunately for Idaho, the imported electricity is
from coal at relatively low cost. Trade is good if you can’t provide that commodity or resource
better locally. In Nome’s case, it has a great wind resource and it can provide much of its own
electricity with this resource more efficiently than importing oil.
I worked in Nome for the Alaska Gold Company for several summers in the late 1970s and early
1980s. At that time the company thought it would reduce its operating cost by switching to oil-
fired turbines instead of the old piston diesel engine generator sets it had used for decades. It’s
reasoning was that the maintenance costs would be much lower. But there was a fuel-efficiency
difference, probably 35% for the diesel engines and only 20% for the turbines. In two years the
company could see the costs of fuel were killing it. It switched back to the diesel generators.
The same case applies to Nome’s overall power generation now. Wind can reduce overall costs
while reducing the export of fuel dollars. For several reasons the choice of Entegrity turbines is a
good one. First, the company has much experience with installations in arctic conditions. There
are already several of these turbines in Kotzebue. The incremental size of the Entegrity (50kW)
is good for a relatively small grid (2 MW average load, 10 MW peak). This size also gives a
great deal of flexibility to project expansion compared to 2.5 MW turbines, for example.
Equipment for installation already exists in Nome, whereas it would be very difficult to get the
size of cranes needed for installation of larger turbines into Nome.
While it is true that in the lower 48 with larger electric grids and access to specialized equipment,
larger turbines would come in at lower costs than Entegrity turbines, these are not the
circumstances in Nome. The choice of Entegrity turbines for the first phase of what will likely be
far more installation of wind is brilliant. Nome has one of the larger micro-grids in rural Alaska,
making it an excellent demonstration site for wind integration. Still, the 50 kW size of the
Entegrity makes it ideal demonstration for wind additions to much smaller grids.
Brian Jackson of Renaissance Engineering and Design has worked with me over several years to
build a wind industry in Idaho. Idaho now has 75 MW of installed wind capacity. He and his
company have extensive experience in all aspects of wind project development, from site
selection to project completion. He was the primary project engineer for the two-Entegrity
turbine Idaho Synthetic Energy, Inc. hydrogen production project about 20 miles southeast of
Boise, which has been operating well for over a year.
This proposal looks great to me. It addresses several of the issues dealing with the selection of
larger turbines that could have stalled another project in mid-stream. I think the likelihood of
success with this project is very high and I encourage the funding agency to support it. A success
integrating wind into a rural Alaska micro-grid at this time of looming approach of global peak
oil production, cannot help but make everyone involved look very good.
Sincerely,
Gerald Fleischman, P.E., MBA
Engineer, Technical 1, Wind and Geothermal Power Development
Energy Division