**Title**: Energy in the North - Curtis Thayer
**Date**: July 1, 2026
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Curtis Thayer

00;00;00;06 - 00;00;08;24 [Curtis Thayer] It's hard when we talk about economic development if we don't know if we have a good power transmission system, we call it, you know, the longest extension cord we could afford at the time.

00;00;08;24 - 00;00;14;15 [Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, I speak with Curtis Thayer, executive director for the Alaska Energy Authority, an independent corporation created by the state legislature to reduce the cost of energy in Alaska. AEA just turned 50 years old, and I had a chance to talk to Curtis after he presented at the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce luncheon. I started the conversation by asking him, in addition to owning hard assets like hydro electric infrastructure and transmission lines, that serve the rail belt. Who else does AEA serve?

00;00;39;06 - 00;00;41;18 [Curtis Thayer] We do a lot of work in rural Alaska, not only in renewable, but also helping them with loan programs to help keep their systems up and running. 

00;00;52;27 - 00;01;01;09 [Amanda Byrd] And, some of the programs that AEA has implemented in the past 50 years has made massive impacts on remote communities, including power cost equalization, the Renewable Energy Fund, and the bulk fuel programs.

00;01;01;09 - 00;01;16;14 [Curtis Thayer] Yeah. What we do is with the powerhouses and bulk fuel kind of go hand in hand. Because in rural Alaska we try to get renewables there, whether it's wind, solar or hydro. But the backbone of all those communities is diesel and will probably be diesel for a very long time. And, so we need to make sure they have operational powerhouses. And also have enough fuel and then have the fuel tanks are code compliant to handle that fuel. Because the one thing is we don't want the community to be out of power at 40 below and have to wait for somebody to come and fix their generator or have an issue with their fuel system.
And it's just we need to take care of our friends and neighbors, and they're our friends and neighbors. We also help with, a grant program that we call the REF or the Renewable Energy Fund, where communities can go and apply for grants to see if they have viable renewables, such as hydro in these communities. And that program, since it was started about 20 years ago, has saved 120 million gallons of diesel a year because they're able to displace diesel - they're not going to replace it - but they can run solar in the summer, they can run wind, run of river hydro. They can do those type of projects which will lower that cost, and they don't use as much diesel. Power cost equalization is a program, that the legislature created. Senator Hoffman deserves a lot of credit for it. But what it does is it looks at the cost of power between, Juneau, Anchorage and Fairbanks and looks at that average. And that creates a floor of what we average to pay up to $0.75 a kilowatt. So when you're living in rural Alaska and your cost of power is $0.50 a kilowatt, we will subsidize that difference. So you're on the same rating as the other three communities on an average. So where we don't we have invested in infrastructure in rural Alaska. We invested in this program to help lower those cost, which is huge because it helps communities - 81,000 Alaskans depend on their program. We spent $46 million doing it. It's done by an endowment. So you don't need a legislative appropriation to do it. So it's a self-sustaining fund, which has been hugely successful.

00;03;03;04 - 00;03;05;12 [Amanda Byrd] The other project you have is transmission

00;03;05;12 - 00;03;12;19 [Curtis Thayer] Yes. One of the biggest issues that we have among the Railbelt, from Homer to Fairbanks, is transmission lines. These transmission lines were built 40 and 50, 60 years ago. They haven't been upgraded. Yet, we've grown as a state and we need to upgrade those transmission lines. And we need to have redundancy on these transmission lines. It's hard when we talk about economic development, if we don't know if we have a good power transmission system, we call it, you know, the longest extension cord we could afford at the time, but we need to have two and we have seven military bases that we have to support and supporting. That is making sure they have the power and the redundancy they're required. And so transmission lines is a big priority not only for AEA but for the utilities also

00;03;47;17 - 00;03;50;08 [Amanda Byrd] One of the transmission lines is the Cook Inlet Powerlink

00;03;50;08 - 00;03;53;27 [Curtis Thayer] The Cook Inlet power link, we received a federal grant. We applied for a federal grant, and it's a $413 million project. The feds are willing to come in and pay $206 million a half of it. There needs to be a match to come from other sources. The state has put in some money, the utilities and the AEA put in $50 million or $142 million shy. But what that does is that gives us that redundancy by putting a secondary line across Cook Inlet to connect to existing power lines. So it's kind of so there's a ring around Cook Inlet, but also if there's a problem in part of that ring, we can ship power to Fairbanks using across the inlet and up up the existing intertie. So really it ties the whole Railbelt together. Next thing we have to do is build a second line to Fairbanks.

00;04;36;03 - 00;04;47;19 [Amanda Byrd] when you're talking about redundancy and a transmission ring, something that still fascinates me is that electrons go in both directions. So if there is a break in that ring, the power can go the other way.

00;04;47;19 - 00;04;51;02 [Curtis Thayer] Correct. And it also depends where the power is located. I'm saying there very well might be I'm just saying you have power being generated. Healy. You have power being generated in Fairbanks. Everything is supported in different places in Anchorage. So if there's a break somewhere, you can reroute that power so you don't lose the system. And that's the one thing is, is if there's a problem in Bradley Lake, it could affect Fairbanks 600 miles away.

00;05;11;11 - 00;05;16;03 [Amanda Byrd] Curtis Thayer is the executive director for the Alaska Energy Authority. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep and follow us on social media.