The roar of diesel generators filled Petersburg’s downtown for a week in June while the region’s hydropower plants were shut down for maintenance. Now, the cost of fuel for those generators will be passed on to utility customers in Petersburg. But the increase will be less than half of what it was last year.
Petersburg, Wrangell, and Ketchikan get much of their energy from hydropower at two dams in Southeast Alaska. The towns purchase it wholesale from the Southeast Alaska Power Agency or SEAPA. But every year, the hydropower plants need maintenance. Karl Hagerman is Petersburg’s utility director.
“All kinds of different maintenance – the equipment at each hydro facility requires testing, updates, and just general checkouts to make sure that it’s reliable and functioning correctly,” he said.
So the town supplements with generators – a much more expensive source of energy. In Petersburg, a fuel adjustment charge is added to monthly bills to cover the cost of the diesel.
Petersburg Power and Light asks people to conserve energy for the whole billing period – not just the week or so of the shutdown. Hagerman says keeping energy use down helps lower the cost of the fuel adjustment charge. The adjustment calculates the overall amount of energy the Borough uses in the June billing period, not just the gallons of fuel burned during the shutdown. This year, energy use was up just a little – 3.7 megawatt hours compared to 3.5 megawatt hours last year.
But the charge is lower this year. The fuel adjustment charge last year was 2.7 cents for every kilowatt hour that a customer used in June. This year, it’s 1.30 cents. Hagerman said there are a few factors that go into that, including the fact that the borough has its own recently-upgraded hydropower plant that provides low-cost energy.
“I think the first and foremost one is Blind Slough hydro is online, and producing two megawatts of power through the shutdown and through the entire billing period,” he said.
Hagerman said another factor is that fuel is cheaper this year. The shutdown was also a day shorter, which helped decrease the amount of diesel burned from 52,000 gallons last year, to 38,000 gallons this year. He said the length of the shutdown can vary because their maintenance list is different every year.
The fuel adjustment charge is based on customers’ June energy usage, but won’t show up on bills until the end of July. Hagerman says there is an easy way to figure out how much more Petersburg customers will be spending in July.
“Your last utility bill will show you the usage that you had for the month of June,” he said. “And you take that usage and kilowatt hours, and you times that by 1.3 cents. So if you use the 1000 kilowatts of power in the month of June and that June billing period, your adjustment charge will be $13.”
Hagerman said he expects bills to be sent out sometime between July 27 and 31.
