SEAPA asks FERC to drop 30.5-mile Swan-to-Bailey line from Swan Lake license

The Southeast Alaska Power Agency, which sells wholesale power to Ketchikan, Petersburg and Wrangell, has asked federal regulators to remove a 30.5-mile transmission line from its Swan Lake Project license, a change that would leave SEAPA operating and maintaining the line as before while no longer bound by the license's terms for that segment.

In its 2024 request for proposals for Swan Lake relicensing services, the agency wrote, "SEAPA's Swan-to-Bailey transmission line is currently included in the Swan License. Again there are risks to attempting removal from the license, and risks to leaving it in."

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has accepted SEAPA's application to amend the Swan Lake Project license and delete the Swan to Bailey transmission line from it, according to the Notice of Application Accepted for Filing. The application was filed May 26 and supplemented Aug. 13. The project is FERC No. 2911.

No physical change to the line is proposed. SEAPA says it would keep operating and maintaining the line as it has in the past. The agency says the connected Swan-Tyee Intertie means the Swan to Bailey line is no longer a primary transmission line for the project and is not part of the licensed project. Energized in 2009, it ties the Swan Lake and Tyee Lake systems together and lets each back up the other.

The Swan Lake project occupies 321.3 acres of federal land administered by the U.S. Forest Service within the Tongass National Forest, and includes two turbine-generator units totaling 22 megawatts. It sits on Falls Creek in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough. FERC issued the license in 1980, and it expires June 30, 2030.

The agency is separately pursuing relicensing of both Swan Lake and, near Wrangell, the Tyee Lake project, where FERC approved use of the Traditional Licensing Process in June. A new Swan Lake license would set operating and resource terms for 40 years.

Comments, protests and motions to intervene are due Oct. 15 at 5 p.m. Eastern, through FERC's eFiling or eComment systems. The commission's contact is Steven Sachs at (202) 502-8666. SEAPA's contact is CEO Robert Siedman. Only those who file a motion to intervene become parties to the case.