MEA's rolling outage plan won't tell members which group they're in

Matanuska Electric Association members would lose power for 30 to 45 minutes at a time under the rolling outage plan the cooperative published this week, a span far shorter than the three to four hours an ordinary after-hours outage takes to restore under MEA's own outage guidance. How long a member would wait before their turn came round again is a range the co-op does not publish.

The co-op's explanation, Understanding Winter Energy Watch and Rolling Service Interruptions, carries one date: last updated Sept. 24. That page says "approximately four and a half hours would pass before the same group could be interrupted again." The co-op's Energy Watch Program page says each group would be out 30 to 45 minutes "about once every five hours." The news article says the service territory is divided into several groups. The program page states that members "are divided into nine groups across our service area."

Those are one rotation described two ways rather than two competing cycle times: nine groups at 30 minutes is four and a half hours, nine at 45 minutes is six and three quarter hours. Each page gives a single point from that range, and neither tells a member the wait could run closer to seven hours. The arithmetic is this article's.

Members cannot presently find out which group they are in. The program page says a member can check "your group assignment and outage rotation schedule on our website and through member communications if this plan were ever activated." That places the information after the plan starts rather than before it.

The co-op serves about 58,000 members from Eagle River through Palmer, Wasilla and Talkeetna. At an Anchorage press conference on Aug. 3, MEA chief executive Tony Izzo said the co-op was preparing tariff language, the service terms a utility files with the state, for rolling blackouts that could begin as soon as November. "This will not include critical installations like hospitals, but on a 30-minute cycle because that's a heating cycle," Izzo said at that press conference.

Rolling interruptions sit sixth on a six-step sequence in the new explanation. Utilities would first monitor conditions, then ask members to conserve, then draw on hydro power and Interior Alaska purchases, then shift generation at the Eklutna Generation Station from gas to diesel and keep diesel coming if the event ran long. "Rolling power outages are not the first response to a natural gas supply concern," the article says. "They are one of the final emergency tools available to utilities." MEA says all electric utilities would participate, not MEA alone.

The program page says the Eklutna plant can run fully on diesel for up to three days on its own reserves. If ENSTAR activates Energy Watch and asks the co-op to switch generation in order to preserve gas for heating, "ENSTAR would be responsible for reimbursing MEA for those additional diesel fuel costs." That arrangement appears in the newsletter item rather than in any filing the co-op cites.

The co-op says it has secured 100 percent of its gas needs this winter and calls rolling interruptions a last resort, extremely rare on the program page. "Preparing for an emergency does not mean we expect one to occur," the article says. ENSTAR has raised concerns about meeting demand during prolonged cold.

Energy Watch belongs to ENSTAR, which developed it with Railbelt electric utilities. ENSTAR's own page tells customers to follow steps that are not in the page's text, and names the Kenai Peninsula Borough, the Municipality of Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough as covered. The account here comes entirely from the utilities' published material.