Energy Department awards AVEC $1.73 million to secure 59 village power systems

The electric systems serving 59 rural Alaska villages are getting $1,730,585 in federal money for cybersecurity upgrades, under a cooperative agreement the U.S. Department of Energy awarded to Alaska Village Electric Cooperative Inc. of Anchorage. The award funds system-wide cybersecurity improvements over two years, in a period that opened Aug. 15 and runs through Aug. 14, 2028. The award record says nothing more specific than that about the work.

The money comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Section 40124 of that law directs the Energy Department to invest $250 million through the Rural and Municipal Utility Advanced Cybersecurity Grant and Technical Assistance Program, which serves rural cooperatives and other small utilities and is run by the department's Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response. The office has said the program prioritizes utilities with limited cybersecurity resources or assets critical to bulk-power reliability. AVEC is contributing $91,084, about 5 percent of a $1.82 million total.

Speaking at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference on May 20, AVEC engineer Bailey Gamble described the cooperative as "a nonprofit utility cooperative serving 59 communities in rural Alaska," with individual systems ranging from average loads of just under 100 kilowatts down to villages averaging 4 to 5 kilowatts. At the same conference, AVEC's William Stamm put the cooperative's total reach in human terms: "Population served is about 31,000 people, similar to Juneau or Fairbanks, but it's about a third of the load that you might see in a community like that."

This account comes from the award record and from remarks the two made in May, three months before the award period began.