Sustainability Official Outlines Power Needs

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Category: News

Created on Wednesday, 16 October 2024 15:31

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By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
The city sustainability coordinator and the electric department are working with experts on options for Sitka’s energy future, but the public has a large role to play when to comes to decisions, the Assembly was told last week.
“We’re talking about people, because energy is personal, and it means having experts come out and talk to people,” City Sustainability Coordinator Bri Gabel said at the regular Assembly meeting. “It means getting kids excited about the grids that their parents built that are going to continue to power their homes ideally in the future. It’s an ongoing effort and ... a lot of learning.”
Gabel was hired as the city’s first sustainability coordinator in September 2022. She is part of the city planning and community development department, and works with all departments in the city to integrate sustainable practices into city projects.
Gabel talked to the Assembly and answered questions about the importance of managing the current electric department resources, making sure the current system can continue to deliver renewable energy and “making sure we have people to run those systems in the future.”
Except in emergencies when the city’s standby diesel generators are fired up, 100% of Sitka’s electricity is generated by the city’s two hydroelectric plants.
Speaking in the special reports section of the Assembly meeting, Gabel stressed the importance of community conversations and education in order to make decisions about Sitka’s energy future.
“The sooner we have these conversations, the more options we can consider,” she said in a followup interview today.
Gabel focused some of her talk to the Assembly on the Sitka Community Renewable Energy Strategy, a community planning project that receives expert help through the U.S. Department of Energy.
The city also participates in C2C –– “Clean Energy to Communities” –– in which the city, the National Renewable Energy Lab, and the Pacific Northwest National Lab work together.
The city’s electric system is “an island microgrid,” which means it’s not connected to any other power system. Gabel said it has the rare qualities of being not only municipally owned, but on a 100% renewable sources of hydropower, Green Lake and Blue Lake.
Gabel said a question she’s frequently asked is, “How much electricity can Sitka generate?”
“My answer is always: it depends. And the reason for that is our ability to generate power is closely linked to rainfall,” Gabel said. “And there is not an equation that says an inch of rain equals this many megawatt hours, but there are some general assumptions. ... A better question to ask is ‘How much electricity does Sitka use?’”
She showed a slide of generation capacity for particular years, peaking on the chart in 2023, a “high water year” when there was enough rainfall to generate up to 190 gigawatt hours. The following graph showed how much electricity Sitka used in the same years, compared to the potential generating capacity.
“Typically Sitka uses about 70 percent of its potential generation,” she said.
Her next slide showed how much electricity Sitka needs. Demand is growing at about 2 percent a year, and for 2024 estimated demand is 125 GwH. “(Two percent) doesn’t sound like a lot in terms of electrical generation but it’s a lot,”
The graph shows that 2% stretched out over two to five years puts Sitka into a greater area of “uncertainty,” when the Sitka hydro plants might not be able to cover demand in a low or even average rainfall year.
“When I say how much energy or electricity Sitka needs, it depends on how much we want, because that alone can answer a lot of different questions,” Gabel said. “The next question I like to ask, is what do we do?”
The three basic options are “nothing,” which means the trajectory does not change and will likely result in a mix of hydro and diesel generation, and diesel is “expensive and dirty.” Gabel said a second option is to build out renewable resources, which is expensive and could result in building too much or not enough capacity to meet demand. Also, she said, “Sitka can also ask the question, instead of generating more, can we use less?”
“This energy landscape is changing so fast that it’s possible that something entirely new comes up, and if we’re feeling ambitious we can do a lot,” Gabel said.
Some of the renewable energy options are geothermal, hydropower, tidal/wave, and wind. Having options, she said, “doesn’t really help us if we  don’t know how much we want, how much we need.”
The Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) project takes a look at how to make Sitka’s power system not only “renewable” but “sustainable.” That means maximizing the efficiency of the current renewable energy resources, increasing infrastructure resiliency to remain 100 percent renewable, and building workforce capacity.
“It’s really important that we have the ability to better manage the resources that we have, as well as get a better understanding of what those resources might look like in a dramatically different future,” Gabel said.
A few of her slides went into more detail on projects including a hydropower analysis; a “risk assessment to inform mitigation strategies;” and a microgrid assessment, to better understand changes in load.
Gabel described the microgrid assessment as a highly detailed mathematical model of the electric system in a computer, where operators could ask questions, and make decisions based on analysis on such events as a tree falling on a line.
“Where the power would go out? And if we can’t get to tree for two days, how much is that going to cost, versus getting to it immediately,” Gabel said. “We can stress test our system without having to make large investments into our infrastructure and hoping it works out. It’s going to be a very powerful tool that we can use to make some very informed decisions.”
The final pillar is related to building workforce capacity to support the electric department.
“Workforce is a challenge across the city, a challenge across the country, and it’s no different in renewable energy,” Gabel said. “If we want our dams to continue to deliver that renewable energy that we’ve love so much over this long time, we need to start figuring out how to make sure we get those positions filled.”
The three-fold strategy includes documenting skills of the current staff, and building interest among students K-12, the speaker said. The city is working with the Sitka Conservation Society and the Sitka Sound Science Center on potential programs.
“Ideally we see an internship program starting to get some kids with some experience and saying ‘hey, if you like this, you can get some education and training. There’s going to be a job for you back in Sitka.’”
Gabel said that in the ongoing Sitka Community Renewable Energy Strategy city staff is conducting outreach and education projects to get the community involved in what Sitka’s energy future will look like.
    “We can’t predict the future but we can perhaps say what we want, and so as this (renewable energy) space continues to rapidly evolve we can be prepared for that and be ready to act on it when we are ready,” Gabel said.
She encouraged the Assembly to think about energy not only in terms of kilowatt hours and costs, but also the human component.
Gabel’s power point is on the Assembly meeting page, for the October 8 meeting, under Special Reports. The city renewable energy website is cityofsitka.com/scres. The website has a calendar for free webinars by Zoom, on Thursdays. They are recorded and posted on the website. They cover energy efficiency and conservation, energy economics; reliability, resiliency and independence; and Sitka’s energy options.
There are also morning interviews with Gabel at 8:15 a.m. on KCAW: How heat pumps work on Oct. 21, emergency preparedness Oct. 29, and the greenhouse gas emissions inventory Nov. 12.