Railbelt-wide unified dispatch likely needs legislation, REAP analyst says

Unified economic dispatch, the practice of running all Railbelt utilities' generators as one system to deliver the lowest-cost power within reliability limits, will probably take a policy push to happen, Antony Scott said Wednesday at a Renewable Energy Alaska Project webinar.

"It's going to require some policy innovation probably to get us there," said Scott, REAP's director of economic and regulatory analysis. Whether that means legislation or another kind of policy push "is not something I want to talk about too much," he said, in part because he doesn't know exactly.

Scott pointed to the pool Matanuska Electric Association and Chugach Electric now share. Voluntary efforts among utilities went on for years without reaching a deal, he said, until the Regulatory Commission of Alaska conditioned its approval of Chugach's purchase of Municipal Light & Power on Chugach and MEA concluding a pool agreement. Policy could create an independent system operator or substantially expand the pool, he said, without prescribing details.

MEA chief strategy officer Julie Estey said the tools already exist, but the utilities are lean organizations with few people to do the work: "I do think policy helps create that imperative and sets a timeline."

Merging ownership would be harder. Estey said MEA can't sell more than 15% of its assets unless more than half its members vote and a majority or supermajority of them approve. In a banner year, she said, 15% of MEA's members voted.

The pool saved $6.8 million in 2025, split equally between the two utilities, according to its independent auditor's report, Scott said. That's "not a game changer by itself," Scott said, though he expects the savings to grow as gas costs rise. "Is the juice worth the squeeze? Even assuming the system is exactly the same, the answer is yes."