Blog: Dermot Cole
UAF seeks to cut energy use during power plant shutdown
Published Friday, April 24, 2009
•University of Alaska Fairbanks Chancellor Brian Rogers is asking everyone connected with UAF to conserve energy during the next 30 days while the power plant is shut down for maintenance. UAF will be buying more GVEA power during this time, paying about six times as much per kilowatt hour.
Here is today's announcement:
Facilities Services Utilities Division has taken our electricity-generating turbine offline for the next 30 days for required maintenance.
During this time, electricity will be purchased from Golden Valley Electric Association.
Conservation efforts and activities are important year-round – and I appreciate the ongoing efforts of the Sustainability Task Force, Facilities Services staff and other employees to maintain momentum in this area.
These efforts are even more valuable when the campus switches to purchased power, which costs UAF approximately six times more than electricity generated using combined heat/power operation at the UAF power plant.
I am calling on the entire campus to reduce electric consumption during this period.
Our goal will be to save at least $50,000 in the next 30 days by reducing electric usage compared to previous years’ levels. This effort will reduce demand, save energy and save money.
To achieve this goal:
Facilities Services will be turning air handlers off at night, keeping chillers off to the greatest extent possible during this 30 days, and limiting use of all high-use, electric-driven building components;
Every department is being asked to manage their electric use; turn off all computers and monitors at night, turn off empty freezers, and turn off as many lights and fans as possible;
Staff, faculty and students should be mindful of personal electricity use for the next month. Please see the list of energy savings tips online at http://facilities.alaska.edu/uaf/fsweb/news/fsweekly.cfm; and
Finally, I expect the campus community to expand the list of creative ideas to assist in this endeavor. I encourage you to send those ideas to me at chancellor@uaf.edu.
I will forward them as appropriate so that departments and groups can act on them.
Facilities Services will monitor our progress. We expect to be able to send out weekly reports and a final report in June. Solar-powered reader boards are up at the main entrances to campus to remind us to conserve energy this month.
Please participate actively in this effort. Together our actions can be the start of something big. Thank you.
•Fairbanksan John Reeves, who doesn't mind a little controversy, has filed an application with the borough to put a nuclear power plant in Ester on a four-acre site off the Parks Highway. What should be a lively public hearing is set for May 19 before the planning commission.
He supports nuclear power and while he has been known to joke about issues in the past, (The "Visit Alaska or the wolf gets it" campaign comes to mind) I think this is a serious effort. He's a guy who doesn't give up, witness his long fight with Alyeska over the pipeline viewpoint at Fox.
Reeves owns a great deal of land in the borough and much of it is zoned general use, which means there are few restrictions.
One of the nine restrictions in that zone is that a nuclear power plant can not be built without a conditional use permit, which requires a public hearing.
The other eight "conditional uses" in the GU zone range from dirty book stores to refineries and landfills.
The information submitted by Reeves contains background material from a company called Hyperion Power Generation, which is trying to get small portable nuclear plants licensed in the U.S.
Reeves wrote that the Hyperion "power module" is a "small-scale self-regulating hydrogen moderated and potassium cooled reactor fueled by powdered uranium hydride." It would be buried and require no maintenance during its operating life.
"It is designed to operate for 5-10 years before being returned to the factory for refueling. The reactor is about 1.5 meters wide and 3 meters tall, easily portable and has no moving parts," Reeves told the borough.
He said Hyperion hopes to have its units licensed in the U.S. by 2012. The unit he has in mind could generated 25 to 30 megawatts of power, which would put it on the same scale as the downtown power plant.
"Nuclear energy is the cleanest, safest, cheapest form of energy available," the permit application said. "No other non-greenhouse gas emitting generation source exists for baseload electricity."
The company's Web site is at http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
"On the technical front, we are aware of the challenges faced in bringing the Hyperion technology to the commercial market and we continue to revise our development plans accordingly. Hyperion has the potential of launching great change in the nuclear and energy industries. This is a responsibility we take very seriously," Hyperion CEO John Deal says on the Web site.
Six times does sound incredible, but that shouldn't hamper conservation efforts.
So if GVEA bought power from UAF it would be cheaper for us???????
Good one Boondoggle, made me laugh.
Cheaper, yes, but you better like flyash.
John Reeves application for the installation of a small, self contained Nuke power plant should be a front page story and the discussion joined...These plants will one day provide power in a lot of remote area's (non-grid connected) of alaska, as well as several other States.
Boondoggle, UAF's power is cheaper than GVEA's power because A) UAF owns it's own power plant, buys it's own coal from Usibelli, and it's Facilities department has a smaller overhead; and B) UAF doesn't ride the cost of things like BESS into the cost of power like GVEA does.
The "nuclear option" is interesting. To say that it will be controversial is a massive understatement. Especially in Ester. That said, I think it is worth looking at more. I would rather that a public entity own and operate it, though. I don't like the idea of another privately-owned power plant.
I forgot, C) UAF's power is generated almost exclusively from coal, unlike GVEA.
John Reeve's plant is similar to one Galena is trying to get approved. They want to use the Toshiba 4S. For many years, the Air force has operated Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators at remote sites around Alaska to power sensing stations for Top-ROCC and Save-Igloo radar systems.
Check out this website:
http://zamboni.pplant.uaf.edu/xmlss/xmls...
Coal is about $.02 to .05 per kwh
Oil is $.15 to .25 per kwh
GVEA is about $.15 to .19 per kwh
$2M? Really? What's your source for that, Boondoggle?
Is it really so hard to believe that a smaller and simpler power generation system could be cheaper?
Yea Booondoggle...whats that referencing. The plant is co-generation...meaning it makes electricity and heats all of the buildings. In the summer, the steam makes chilled water to cool the buildings. Pretty darn efficient compared to GVEA or any other large utility. And there are little capital cost over the years other than one time cost to construct. The plant personnel maintain a very good operation with little money. And unlike GVEA, they do not leave your clock blinking once a week all summer long. THe UAF plant is probably the most reliable plant in the state.
The PERS liabilities are an effect of your elected officials and Gamblin Galvin, the Revenuer. Don't place PERS problems on UAF's plate....that one is not their fault.
Thats it on Herb ? It would be very intersting to know just how many tax dollars this person has given away in thirty years. His part time job at the city was mostly hiring his buddys to do his job while he played golf. Oh yea his other part time job at the UA was teaching others how to beat the system, good to finally see him gone..
Nuclear plant in earthquake country???
(This comment was removed by the Newsminer.com staff. Please see our User Agreement for further information.)
I absolutely believe that UAF power is 6x cheaper than GVEA's for the same reason Henry brought up:
A) UAF owns it's own power plant, buys it's own coal from Usibelli, and it's Facilities department has a smaller overhead; and
B) UAF doesn't ride the cost of things like BESS into the cost of power like GVEA does.
C) UAF's power is generated almost exclusively from coal, unlike GVEA.
GVEA has only one 40 year old 25MW coal plant, it's running in Healy, the rest of it's coal generated power comes from Aurora power plant, owned by Usibelli Energy.
Coal generated power is SIGNIFICANTLY less expensive than oil power, even at today's depressed oil costs.
Thanks for being smart and saving your "owners" money GVEA!
AKcitizen,
You are right on. UAF so far hasn't listened to the Climate Change scammers and is producing power and heat from locally produced coal and quite efficiently. I hope they keep doing it and should consider increasing capacity and sell the cheap power to GVEA.
duramax, you do understand the rate published on the site you provide is, well, a rate for service rendered and not reflective of cost?
Darfur- What's your beef with Reeves? Through hard work and brains he's become the single biggest private landholder in all Alaska, and he beat Alyeska like a drum when they ripped him off.
Good for him.
You sound jealous, and unhappy. Reeves probably has more fun in any five minute period during the day than you have all year.
The fact is that his energy plan is a hell of a lot better than anything else we've heard. He'd bring affordable power to the Interior with ZERO air pollution. No Greenhouse gas emissions. No smoke. Zip. Nadda. Compare that to the dirty coal plants, or coal/wood boiler stinkathons people are setting up in their backyards.
With enough of these new units in place Fairbanks could finally have clean air, and affordable power.
Sometimes it is good for planning commissions to have to look at an issue that they have always thought would never happen here. Perhaps this will be an opportunity for them (and other planning commissions in the state) to check out their regulations/codes to ensure that they have something in place to deal with just this sort of event. At least Mr. Reeves is making people think about this issue even if he is "joking".
ALL POWER PLANTS SHOULD INSTALL GENERATORS LIKE BERNIE USES ON THEIR HOT WATER EXHAUST LINES!! This would produce power using a "waste" that needs to be cooled anyway. Might as well put it to use. Perhaps UAF could install a couple of those, sell the excess to GVEA and cover the PERS cost with those funds...everybody wins!
Boondoggle?....that definitely describes your brainpower.
John Reeves and Bernie Karl are both innovators! They should be given encouragement and lattitude in making their dreams become reality. Through the years, many inventions and inventors have been thought of as askew and out of touch with reality, but these two have proven otherwise over and over.
My vote is to keep John and boot FreeDarfur.
I can produce Alaskan uranium if John can build the plant.
LOL Prospector. Both John Reeves and Bernie Karl deserve encouragement from Fairbanks and SOA. Great innovators. Got to admire people, who produce despite the public naysayers.
Post a comment