Port of Alaska advances a new substation to power its next cranes

The Port of Alaska is getting a new electrical substation — and it needs to be running by August 2028, or the port's new dockside cranes will have nothing to plug into.

The Anchorage Platting Board cleared a land-use step Wednesday for the project at the Don Young Port of Alaska, the gateway for the bulk of Southcentral's incoming freight and nearly all its refined fuel. The substation, to be built by Chugach Electric, will power a new set of ship-to-shore cranes at Terminal 1, replacing 1960s-era infrastructure that sits in earthquake and tsunami hazard zones and can't handle modern equipment.

The board's main task was shifting a road right-of-way to make room. Realigning it also happens to move the substation onto better ground. "Realigning this thing takes it out of a lot of the topography, which makes it much more buildable," said Dave Hale, representing the port.

The whole job carries a price tag of up to about $48.9 million, including roughly $11.3 million to relocate the facility. It's part of the long-running Port of Alaska Modernization Program, though Hale said the substation is separate from the terminal construction itself.

One wrinkle didn't come up Wednesday: back in January, shipping company Matson had voted against the chosen substation site over concerns about power reliability, according to a briefing to an Anchorage Assembly committee. The site also sits in a high seismic-risk area, and no new soils report was filed — staff relied on the port's archived data. Of 314 notices mailed, none drew public comment.