REAP: 2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series | Exploring Unified Economic Dispatch (Pt. 2)

Alrighty. Well, it is noon on the dot here, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026. So, I want to thank everybody for joining us for this first installment in REAP's 2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series, Uniting Alaska's Largest Grid: Exploring Unified Economic Dispatch Part Deux. I'm really excited to dive into the second iteration of this conversation on that important topic with these two Alaska energy experts. Before I do, just brief intros, because we did start this conversation as part of our Spring Energy Speaker Series.

I do want to do the usual sort of introductions and just ground rule laying for today's webinar, but first and foremost, I want to acknowledge the lands that I'm Zooming in from today. So, I work for Renewable Energy Alaska Project, and I live and work on the lands of the Dena'ina peoples here in Anchorage. So, we're a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency across the state of Alaska, and in that work, we draw immense inspiration from Alaska Native peoples who have stewarded these lands and waters for time immemorial and really sort of bring that inspiration to using our resources efficiently and sort of trying to harness local energy resources for the benefits of all Alaskans. So that's the motivation that we bring to this work. I want to call on folks who are in the attendee group here to maybe introduce yourselves and your affiliations in the chat, and I'll introduce our speakers again in a moment.

But just a few housekeeping notes. This webinar does have that Zoom sort of like question and answer functionality, and that's the best way if folks are introducing themselves in the chat to just make sure that we don't miss your questions. We'll try and carve out 10 or 15 minutes at the end to sort of address some audience Q&A, so please make sure to log your questions using that function throughout. This webinar is also being recorded, so we'll plan on posting it to the YouTube channel afterwards. So really appreciate you guys being here today.

It'll be accessible afterwards, and really, I think, as I've been saying in some of my outreach to you all, I'm hoping that these conversations can serve as just a spark to ignite further conversations about these important energy topics, whether it's today's focus or the remaining 3 in this series. So I really appreciate you guys being here today and also helping to spread these recordings widely. Now on to the meat of the discussion. As I mentioned, we sort of hosted an introductory webinar on the topic of unified economic dispatch for the final installment of our Spring Energy Speaker Series. So I do just want to sort of orient ourselves to where we're at in that conversation.

And offer just a super brief recap on what we covered. But before doing so, did want to just thank Julie and Antony for joining us today. Last time I gave very long-winded sort of bios for these two. Super interesting backgrounds and just, you know, wide-ranging expertise. But I just want to remind us that Julie Esty is the Chief Strategy Officer at Matanuska Electric Association, and Antony Scott is the Director of Economic and Regulatory Analysis here at REAP.

So if you want to hear the more long-winded version of those, please go ahead and watch the recording of that first webinar. And now, just before I, you know, quiet down and really open it up to the experts, did just want to offer a brief recap on what we covered last time. So we started with just sort of defining the concept of unified economic dispatch and making the distinction between how the rail belt grid is currently operated and then what that unified economic dispatch would be. So just to sort of like, you know, pin those definitions from the start, what we have right now is security-constrained economic dispatch within the separate service territories of the rail belt electric utilities. So that's their process for finding the lowest cost generation schedule within their service territories while ensuring their power— their portion of the power grid remains reliable and secure during normal operations and sort of planning for contingencies around unexpected equipment failures, for example.

So that's that security constrained. And then economic dispatch, just trying to minimize the cost of the power that they reliably provide to their members. And so then the concept of unified economic dispatch is bringing that from a utility-by-utility basis to sort of a system-wide basis across the rail belt. So unifying the generation and transmission operations across the rail belt grid, across those separate utilities to provide the lowest cost power reliably and in a secure manner for rail belt ratepayers. So that's just— that's the distinction between how the rail belt grid is currently operated and the definitions of those two related but separate ways of doing it.

We touched on a lot of the rail belt history around how this concept of unified economic dispatch has been discussed even since the '60s. Julie kind of pulled out some research she'd been doing into the history of MEA because they had a big anniversary coming up, and so it's just something that's been talked about for a while, and we've sort of been closer to it in the past, and then we've— right now we're a bit farther away from it, early in the 2000s and sort of into the 20-teens, utilities went through an evolution of the way that they transacted with another— one another and sort of sold and purchased power from each other and sort of coordinated their operations. We've actually now moved a bit closer to it just with the tight power pool between Matanuska Electric Association and Chugach, but that's two of the more utilities on the rail belt. So we covered a bit of that history. We also just touched on the fact that unified economic dispatch is in place across the United States, whether it's in CAISO or ERCOT in Texas or PJM on the East Coast.

And so really just wanted to ground ourselves in not only is this a concept that's been talked about here for a while, it's been adopted effectively elsewhere in the United States. Of course, we also touched on South Central's Type Power Pool within that. Then we just sort of touched on three different models for unified economic dispatch, those being markets where an independent entity determines the clearing price between sellers and bidders who might be selling their power into the grid and then bidding for that power for their customers. A second would be an independent generation and transmission entity. So that itself is complex, and I think we'll sort of touch on what that could look like in the railboat, but really just an independent entity that either owns all the assets on the system or to whom those assets are pledged by the entities who are on the system so that then they can sort of like, for lack of a better term, I'm not an expert, flip the switches to sort of adhere to unified economic dispatch and then And a third would be just sort of pre-wired agreements, so a settlement between the parties regarding how the savings might be shared between entities as unified economic dispatch is implemented on a grid.

So that's more akin to— and I think we'll talk more about just sort of the tight power pool agreement between MEA and JUGETC. Lastly, we just sort of talked about certain studies and reports regarding the potential savings to be seen on the rail belt if we were to move to this unified economic dispatch model. Also, you know, spoke about the inherent limitations of trying to project the future. A lot of this is dependent on things like fuel price projections and also just current constraints within the system, which we'll touch on in more detail today. And then I think finally we just sort of really left off with the recognition that there are savings to be captured, as you know, calculated across these different reports and even just in the findings of the Type Power Pull-Up-to-Date.

But the magnitude of those savings are dependent on many different factors, which is a big focus of today's discussion. And constraints within the system, and that perspective differ regarding the magnitude of that potential benefit and sort of how to split those across the rail belt. So that was a mouthful, but I wanted to try and keep the recap to sort of 5 minutes or less, which I think I succeeded on. And now we can really dive into the, you know, the second iteration, that part 2 of this conversation about its potential fit in the rail belt, what that could look like, and then those sort of constraints within the system that can really sort of impact the savings to be gleaned. So maybe to just serve it up, we did sort of prepare for this, and we've got some topics that we certainly want to discuss as a group.

So I was hoping to just serve it up and begin the conversation around those different ways that we could potentially envision adopting unified economic dispatch in the rail belt. So I guess maybe one just like question to start, but then also prompt to maybe expand upon just like the tight power pool agreement and how that might be like, a potential starting point for doing so. I think we agreed beforehand that it's easiest to start from the baseline where the electric utilities keep and maintain their existing generation suite across the rail belt, right? And then that's, that's the starting point upon which we can sort of decide the path forward. So is that a fair characterization of the starting point?

And then from there, could we maybe start to lay out, like, how from that starting point we could use the tight power pool agreement as one model for then pursuing unified economic dispatch on the rail belt?

Yes. Perfect. I mean, I think the story is thinking about how to change ownership of generation facilities. Over time there's been— well, there is periodic talk of wouldn't it be just simpler if we had a rail belt? Generation and transmission utility?

Um, and the answer to that, I think, is yes, but commercially and financially, getting there from here is exceptionally difficult. Um, so it doesn't mean that it could not be done if everybody was working really hard to do it, but, but maybe it could not be done. Like, I, I don't know, but it is for sure difficult because there are a lot of existing bonds that are out there that pledge certain assets. I mean, without reviewing all the bond covenants, I think would be very difficult to say for sure that, oh yeah, you could just form a single G&T. And then there are also issues around the disposition of co-op utility assets in state law that are very difficult to kind of overcome in terms of voting threshold.

Yeah, I agree with Anthony on that. You know, I think, does it make sense for the rail belt? To his point, I do think it does, but the road to get there, I think that could be— that would be a much longer horizon. And especially considering how we operate it currently and our existing generation suite, as that evolves, if that evolves, whether that's through larger projects, whether that's through more state involvement, whether that's through more joint projects, That could become easier, but the current generation suite would be incredibly tricky for all the reasons that Anthony mentioned. I know for MEA, part of the protections for our members to stop, you know, somebody coming in and kind of pirating our assets is that I have to have a certain amount of people vote, a percentage, like over 50% of my members vote, and then a majority or a supermajority of those, excuse me, need to vote yes if I want to get rid of more than 15% of my assets.

And so, you know, co-op elections, I get— I mean, we just had a banner year and we had 15% of our members vote. And so that's a really steep curve. And is the juice worth the squeeze, I think, is that question for existing assets. Now, should we be thinking differently as we go into a new future? Potentially.

And I think that's worth the conversation. But if we wait for that eventuality, we'll still be talking about this what my successor in another 80 years is trying to do the 165th anniversary of MEA and looking back towards records. So, yeah. Yeah. And I will also point out in terms of thinking about big new generation assets, for the most part, we have very significant reserve margins in the rail belt.

Like well over 50%, um, which is about 4 times what most other systems in America have in terms of reserve margin. And so it's unclear, absent some great big, great, great big new loads that need to be served by existing utilities, um, like how what the use case is for building great big new generation assets. So I agree with everything that Julie said. I just like, from a realism perspective, moving forward, it's unclear to me politically, financially, culturally, you know, the limitation of state resources, how we get there from here. So Yeah.

Well, that makes me think of another topic that I think we'll touch on later in this webinar, but then to maybe serve it up for— okay, so if that's the agreed-upon starting point, I know we've spoken in the past both during the prior webinar and also preparing for today's about the type power pool agreement between Matanuska Electric Association and Chugach. So if we've agreed, you know, that the utilities are going to maintain ownership of their generation suite Is the tight power pool agreement then like a workable starting point that could be expanded to include the rest of the rail belt utilities?

I'll start here, and I'm getting signals on my computer screen that I'm having low bandwidth for some reason. So if I go in and out, then we'll just let Anthony pick up where I left off. But, you know, the tight power pool agreement is working. The benefits are clear. We covered that a little bit last session.

And, you know, looking at some of the projections for what the— what Economic Dispatch could glean, you know, being in that $30 million, we're seeing, you know, $6 to $7 million a year, which is a lot. And we would gladly take those savings in this day and age with the price of everything else increasing. So it's absolutely working. Both our members and Chugach Electric members are benefiting from it. And we're working through a lot a lot of the kinks.

So I do think it's a worthwhile place to start. Now, there are still some disagreements between the two parties of how things, say, should be— how things should be settled out. And so I think those would absolutely need to be— need to be solved. But I think it's a great place as a starting point, and it was set up to do that. And there's provisions in the power pool for adding additional entrants to the agreement.

So it's set up for that. It was something that was contemplated, and I think it's absolutely an important place to start.

Or at least could be an important place to start, right? I mean, in terms of building out the framework for the rail belt as a whole. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's absolutely essential, but I think it's— I think we've learned a lot And I think the provisions that the RCA dictated initially as, you know, what needed to be included, and then the agreement that's been made, the conversations around how that would settle out, I think that a lot of work has been done that would be a great starting place. Now, whether you use it as the starting place to grow from that's, I think, a different conversation. But I think a lot of work and lessons learned has been— has gone into there.

We're still— there's still more to come, but I think we absolutely should start there to understand the different dynamics and where the best of intentions could maybe slide sideways based on contractual agreements. So, yeah, if I could speak to that just a little bit more. I was recently reviewing, well, before I go there, Julie, can you talk to the issue of trust? And like, there's an issue in any system where you have one person doing the dispatch that they might manipulate the dispatch to favor a dispatch— I mean, manipulate the dispatch in a way that favors their own party's economic interests, either by withholding generation or withholding transmission or what have you. And so that agreement built in certain structures to try to protect against that in terms And maybe you could just speak to those real quickly.

Yeah, I mean, as cooperatives, just like to kind of get to the base of it, I think as cooperatives, every— we are reinforced through bylaws, through local boards, through, you know, even RCA regulations and statutes to make sure that we are getting the maximum value for our members. We have locally elected boards who are responsible, fiduciarily responsible to their members. And so, you know, as we speak about trust, I think there's kind of two elements of that. One, it's just, you may have two different folks coming to the table with all good intentions, but just different motivations based on what their specific, what's, what benefits their members the most. And so I think there are those kinds of issues to resolve.

And then there are just making sure that you trust those people across the table, that they are going to be trying to look out for their members, but they're also not going to do that at your detriment. And so I think there's kind of those two elements of trust. One's just almost institutional. I may have different motivations than you. And then one is like, who are those people?

And how much do you trust that They're going to look out for their members, but they're also not doing that at your detriment. So, you know, I think there's two elements to that. And to your point, some of the, some of the aspects we have to help guard from that is one, we share, we share responsibilities. So Chugash Electric does the, does the dispatching and MEA does the scheduling. And that really offers some checks and balances.

There's also a third-party independent objective auditor that audits audits the results, checks to see if there's any sort of gaming of the system or actions that may not be considered kind of fair play. And so I think those elements can be built in to, you know, even as we've learned in the rail belt over the decades, you know, leadership comes and goes, the amount of trust between parties shifts continuously, and so how can we construct those long-term agreements to protect from the highs and lows of trust between parties, I think, will be a critical element moving forward with any arrangement. And Anthony, I just want to let you speak, and also I received just a note about your volume being a little low, so if you want to try and speak up, that might be helpful for the audience too, just for you speaking into the microphone.

Hopefully that helps. Hopefully that helps. Great. Yeah. Okay.

Hopefully it's not going to be piercing for everybody.

Yeah, I think the issue of a market monitor, to my knowledge, Every RTO or ISO market outside has got a market monitor that performs similar sort of auditing functions that the tight pool, the central balancing area type pool, has. I read the auditor's report for 2025 pretty recently. I think One of the most important things in that report, it's interesting, it's something like 25 pages long and it'll put you to sleep in terms of some of the details. I speak from experience.

But one of the most interesting things about that is that the report concludes that they found no, zero, evidence of gaming or either party engaging in commercial behavior to advantage their own members over the most efficient dispatch of the system as a whole.

And, you know, it's one year, it's not forever, things come and go, as Julie said, blah, blah, blah. But I think That's a really big deal because it does suggest at least that you can craft institutions within the existing cultural framework that work. You know, even though, I mean, I will say my impression having been inside a utility for a brief period, only about 18 months, And certainly as a regulator looking at disputes among the parties and then talking with lots of folks, there is often not a lot of— a great deal of trust that parties will treat each other fairly. And as Julie says, that comes and goes. Sometimes you have periods where trust is pretty high and then sometimes it's not so high.

But certainly things do erupt over time and And it, my impression anyway is that having as much sunlight as possible on outcomes and behavior is helpful in that regard. But I, in any case, like the bottom line for me is like it's sort of a success story. Julie said, and I mean, this is what the market monitor said in 2025. Realized savings from the pool were all of $6.8 million, which is great. And those were split equally between the two parties.

That's great, but it's not a game changer by itself, right? I don't think anybody would notice that on their utility bills.

That's in part because both parties have pretty similar fuel costs, and the heat rate differences between the engines that each party has are relatively modest. And so if there aren't big differences in terms of the cost of generation between one party and the next, the benefits from economic dispatch are always going to be lower.

So bigger differences in cost mean bigger benefits from unified dispatch as a general, as a general matter. Yeah, just to add to the audit, we were really happy with that. I mean, it was actually, it was hard to find an auditor, um, and it was, you know, they're still learning. So I think, you know, it is, I think, an essential part, um, of any arrangement just to ensure Everybody feels comfortable and it helps build in a trust. And then also I think, again, the people across the table.

We— Mike Miller at Chugach Electric has been just wonderful to work with. We've found some really great solutions. We've been able to fine-tune how we operate, gain efficiencies. So I think when you have those two willing participants across the table really trying to like Okay, this is good, but can we get, can we get better? And how does that work for you and for us?

Not like you're coming at it like, well, we want this.

And making sure that there's mutual benefit and building that trust along the way has really, it's been amazing how much faster we can work and how much more efficient we can be when there's trust between those parties. So, you know, I think there's— there's both elements are important, but that auditor really helps solidify that if we can— if we can make sure that they're educated and we're confident in their analysis.

Yeah, one— one thing we said last time, and I think— I think you said it, although the Donovan today in the introduction, but you did go really fast, so I'm not sure. My brain doesn't work that fast, but the current type pool works on splitting of operational savings. So what I mean, one of the things I hope we do, Donovan, is like post a link to that auditor's report because people may find it interesting. One of the main ink that's spilt in that report has to do with how savings are calculated within the pool. So there's a joint dispatch which is developed, and the costs, the operational costs of that joint dispatch are compared with the hypothetical standalone dispatch of the two parties, like working totally by themselves and using only their own stuff to meet their own load.

And it's hypothetical because that's not what's happening, right? So you have a model dispatch as like what happens if we all just do our own thing versus the joint dispatch. And again, those are only operational savings. There is no compensation and settlement for anybody's existing sunk costs of generation. So the generation assets that MEA built they are entirely responsible for.

Their members are responsible for the costs of— the capital costs of those assets. And the same is true for Chugach Electric. And I think as we think about stepping forward with unified economic dispatch, we probably want to maintain that same approach for how we calculate splitting savings. The issue around cost sharing of new assets, which Julie alluded to earlier is really important, but a separate issue and not something that we probably have kind of front-burner need to tackle right away on the generation side, given the enormous reserve margins that we already do have, as well as— so which means that any, anything new that gets built will likely be because it provides energy, not capacity, more cheaply than the existing stuff. So that's not a burden having rights to that stuff.

It's actually a benefit.

And then on the transmission side, we have the RTO, which we're not going to really deal with today. But the part of the purpose of that legislation was to clarify cost-sharing rules for new transmission assets.

And hopefully that will be done. We get an RCA order out December 1st, so we'll see what they say.

But yeah, I mean, and as I understand it, that issue around compensation between the parties is one of the background rumblings issues, right? Like, oh no, like you're using my assets, you should pay for some of the capital cost of the assets. And the rationale is, no, no, no, no, you, you built those assets to serve your own customers' needs. So, and you were prepared to do that anyway. So, but by joining the pool, we can both be better off operationally.

So we'll just split those savings. And it really simplifies getting to a commercial agreement among the parties. So you guys have touched on a couple of really, like, important topics that I wanted to elicit with this conversation. So some of them are just the constraints within the system and also, yeah, decision-making around things like, you know, upgrades or additions to the transmission system. So that the RTO, just to spell it out, the Rail Belt Transmission Organization, and that open docket with the RCA around the open access transmission tariff that's ongoing.

There's also— I know we've spoken in preparation for this webinar about the context around the Rail Belt Reliability Council and their ongoing development of an integrated resource plan for the rail belt. So, you know, that just— that comes to mind as you talk about decisions to be made about like generation additions to the system. And I know that's an important piece of context that we wanted to touch on, so maybe now is a decent time. The one other thing just to make note of it, and then we can come back to it, is that the, the, just the fuel supply considerations. You and Anthony, you made the great point about like the differences in the costs for the utilities is where the savings are to be gleaned.

And certainly fuel supply is like a big priority for the utilities right now. And to your point too, there's like differences in the cost of generation between the utilities. So I think like two of the big Well, one contextual piece is that integrated resource plan, which I'm hoping that you guys could speak to just about like its interactions with the concept of unified economic dispatch and sort of even how that's being considered in the development of draft portfolios. And then maybe we could veer back then towards the fuel supply consideration, what that would mean. And then we could— I also do want to touch on just like the one other potential path forward.

So like we've got that agreed-upon starting point. Point, maybe it's the tight power pool, but maybe there's this other way too. And so maybe we could go with the IRP and then, like, touch back on the fuel supply considerations and those savings between utilities and then bring it back to, like, the tight power pool and then a separate way for it as well. So Donovan, just before we move on to that, there's a lot of bite off in there, but I just wanted to kind of close the loop on transmission because as we think about the power pool, as we think about economic dispatch, you want to make sure that it's as free of economic distortions as possible. And one of those is wheeling charges, which is what the RTO was commissioned to do.

And wheeling, for folks out there in TV land, is the cost that each owner of a transmission line charges to go across that segment. So the RTO was formed to basically bring all of those costs into one big bucket and spread those to the end users. And that's one of the things, if we look to the existing power pool to eliminate that distortion, because we have— there's no, currently no wheeling within the power pool transactions. So anything that we wheel does not have to bear the extra burden of a wheeling charge because that could distort the economics. It could be that, yes, this is the next best generator to produce power, but if you add that wheeling on, it all of a sudden isn't.

And so we didn't want to distort. And I think, you know, the split the savings is kind of similar to that. If you're adding an adder to a transaction, it distorts the economics of just using the next most efficient generator. To meet your load. And so transmission matters as far as especially looking at expanding it beyond the existing pool.

One of the reasons this pool works, in addition to, like, very complementary generation suite, is the fact that we don't have any transmission constraints. And so we really have multiple paths, plenty of capacity to move power where it needs to go between Chugach Electric and MEA. Almost all the time. Not out— not every time, but almost all the time. And— but that doesn't exist as we look north and south.

And so the benefits— there's still— there's still work that we can do with the existing system because there— there is capacity, especially going north on the line. There's more congestion south, but north on the line, there's— there's things we can do now. But the there will— it really loosens the constraints considerably if there's more capacity is a big thing. How much power can you move? And then redundancy is the second, is can we count on it?

Because if I'm buying a bunch of power from, say, Golden Valley sending me a bunch of power south, if I can't count on it, I have to have something at the ready, whether that's, you know, battery or spinning reserve going, which just adds to the cost and distorts the economics as well. So just wanted to put a little bit more color onto that transmission issue and how we handle it currently in the Power Pool is there's just no wheeling between— for Power Pool transactions. So, Antje, I'll toss it to you if there's any rebuttal and then— or additions. And then I know Donovan laid out— laid a nice plate out for us to—. So many, so many things.

So many things to cover. So I'm going to try to pretend I'm like Donovan. Not really. In terms of the Northern Intertie, there is— I mean, this is a live dispute that the RCA will resolve about whether the Intertie agreement must be unwound or not. So right now there are wheeling charges associated with the Northern Intertie.

And those wheeling charges effectively serve as a tax, as Julie suggests, on transactions between the two regions, northern and central, say, or—. I didn't call it a tax, though. No, no, no.

Whether or not it's a distortion or not, I mean, it reduces the opportunity for benefits. To be enjoyed as a system as a whole because transmission costs don't actually change with transmission use, um, as a— certainly as a first and second order set of approximations. So, um, you know, we will see what the RCA decides in terms of the Northern Intertie. The legislature, I think, intended that with, with that piece of legislation that there would be no wheeling throughout the system, and then when the RTO came to file, they encountered a number of existing contracts and contractual arrangements that they did not upset. I mean, that they just didn't, right?

Not saying that they could have or should have, but they didn't. And so then there's You know, there's another question of whether they could have, and that's one of the things that the RCA is going to address, right? So, but the point is, if you do not have to pay a toll for using the highway, then it's going to be more economic to use the highway, right? And so there would be more movement on the highway is sort of the point. And hopefully we get to institutional innovation or contractual negotiations or what have you, such that we really do get rid of wheeling charges throughout the rail belt, because that will just enhance the benefits of economic dispatch.

You'll still have them, they'll just be less, right? Uh, the tight power pool would still deliver savings even if there were wheeling, but they would be less. Um, I don't know how much less, but they would be less.

Donovan, you talked about the— so Julie alluded to this. One of the issues around the Northern Intertribal right now is it's actually like not close to full capacity right now. I think probably pretty much zero hours of the year. And that's in part because there's not available gas for any of the central or southern utilities to burn to generate power to sell to Golden Valley. Um, you know, we don't, we don't have a surfeit of gas for that.

We do have a lot of excess generation south of the range. So if we did have economically priced gas, it might well benefit Golden Valley considerably. To be able to purchase power, which historically used to be the case. I mean, until we ran into this Cook Inlet natural gas shortage, Golden Valley bought a lot of their energy from south of the range. And even though it was interruptible, they still purchased a heck of a lot.

I want to say something like 30% of their demand at the time came from south of the range. And even though it was interruptible and couldn't, um, nevertheless, that's what they did and made sense. It was less, uh, economically efficient than if there were n-1 redundancies on the transmission line system, which there is not. Um, like Golden Valley had to carry more backup, um, in case the line went down somehow. That's what the BES was there for, significantly, I think.

For a lot of hours of the system. But that's just adding to really what Julie had said. Donovan, you wanted to talk about the IRP quickly? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the RRC's IRP process is designed to identify new generation assets that would benefit the region as a whole.

And the statute and regulations around that are like, don't worry about who owns what, right? Figure out what to build in terms of generation that would be most efficient for the region as a whole. And the idea, I think, is to identify the opportunities and then leave on for the IRP's action plan and future commercial negotiations among the parties, like, well, okay, so who should build it? Who has to take cost responsibility? Can we share some of those assets, right?

I mean, that's— it's not totally specified, which I think is actually good, trying to get too prescriptive about how that works.

But that's you know, what that process is intended to do. But one of the things that we— I just touched on in terms of the transmission loading and the issue of gas is as we look forward to LNG imports, one of the things that we really want to solve is making sure that Golden Valley Electric has access to gas imports on the same commercial terms that any of the parties south of the range do. Because that will maximize the benefits of a future unified economic dispatch arrangement, because no party which did have access to gas could use their market power to extract rent associated with a gas cost uplift. Right. Unified dispatch is just looking at the steel in the ground, so to speak, and the cost of operating that rather than arbitraging around natural gas.

Yeah. And currently the power pool is set up that we bring our own gas. So there's— that doesn't create any sort of economic distortion. We have different prices for gas right now. Chugach has a different price than we do based on our contracts.

And that will, you know, that may continue into the future depending on how we solve the gas problem. And so I think to Antony's point, it doesn't necessarily need to be the same price as ours as long as it's theirs to put into the— it's not an upcharge to the power that's produced and making sure that they've got that gas that then they can put into the system same as we all do.

There's still those benefits. But yes, and totally agree. Yes, and the concern that I have is that let's say, let's imagine that MEA has got access to gas and Golden Valley's only access to gas is by purchasing it from MEA or Chugach. Right. If you guys could extract rent, right, it's like, well, I'm going to give you a markup.

I've got gas, but I'll sell it to you at a markup.

How much would you want to mark it up? Well, just enough so that the economic transaction still happens in terms of split the savings. And so now it's no longer a sort of fair split the savings in terms of actual costs. You're now earning profits on the gas that you previously purchased or purchased rights to get. And one of the reasons why I see that as a very significant problem is it undermines the commercial and political rationale for getting people pushed together.

Like, I don't want to join a system where you can exploit me. Like, if that's how that works and you get most of the benefit, then I'm out, which is pretty reasonable as a human reaction. So yeah, I agree. And I think we were saying the same thing. I think, you know, we may be paying different prices, but as long as it's not part of the— it doesn't distort the economic transaction, doesn't distort the value of that dispatch, then I think But I agree with you, it should— there's possibilities for all kinds of gain, and I think that's one that we want to make sure isn't, especially based on, you know, where prices are right now.

We're all trying to keep costs low for our members.

I'll just say we're chipping away at the plate pretty well, and I do want to leave some time for—. Thank you. Oh, I mean, you guys are pros. So I do want It's 12:45. I want to leave 10 minutes for audience Q&A.

So, 5 minutes left before trying to open it up for that, and that's a reminder for you all as well. Please log your questions using the Q&A function. We've got a good handful already. To bring it back then, so, you know, we've done a great job of touching on, like, contextual things, you know, decisions that are being worked towards right now, and then also just some of the limitations of the system to be considered that would dictate the magnitude of the savings to be had under unified economic dispatch. I do want bring us back to sort of the ways of getting there then, because we've spoken a lot about the tight power pool as a starting point.

Um, and I think maybe this can be a yes or no sort of like duality of questions around like, so it's, you know, at least the agreement is structured in a way where it premeditated the potential expansion for more parties. And so there is an avenue for sort of renegotiating and expanding that, and that would be itself a process obviously with new parties. Um, and then I think you really laid out, both of you, but But especially Julie, you laid out well that like, you know, under the existing agreement, it's a bring your own gas sort of model. And so that will be important for if that were the path forward, expanding that agreement to include more parties. I know we did— we touched on in the prior webinar, and I did want to dedicate just a bit of time about, you know, talking about the alternative, which could be just an entirely separate entity.

So an independent entity to whom, you know, we agreed that like it's not going to own the suite. For just very practical reasons— but to whom the generation and transmission assets can be pledged to then operate those. So we could— could we just talk a bit about practically what that would look like and just all the maybe high-level considerations that come to mind when it's like, okay, so how would we start to sort of move in that direction if that's the path that we chose? Yeah, I want to— I want to address this. I think it's important to remember that the existing type pool happened.

So there were voluntary efforts among three parties that went on for years that did not conclude, and that looked to be well off the rails when Chugach just chose to acquire MLNP. And one of the things that the RCA did is they conditioned their approval of that transaction on Chugach and MEA concluding their negotiations and bringing a pool agreement. So like, there was, um, there was a government policy coercive force, like, this is something that we want to see and have to have, and we're going to withhold our agreement unless you— of the transaction unless you move forward. Um, my own view is to get to— and reasonable people can disagree— but to get to unified economic dispatch within the rail belt as a whole is going to require similar policy force, whether it's legislation or something else, but most likely legislation. So then the question is like, because we've been talking about this, as Julie's noted, we've been talking about this at least since the 1960s and certainly since the aughts when people agreed that they were going to pull away from Chugach being the central dispatcher for a lot of the system, not all of it, but a lot of it.

Like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again is not easy. So having it kind of spontaneously happen, I think my view is it's— we— I will die first before that happens for sure. That's my view. So then the question is like, okay, so sort of how do you move this forward?

Can I just speak to that part, Antony? Because I do agree that, you know, as I've been thinking about this, you know, economic dispatch makes so much sense for so many reasons. How do we make it happen? And what's the role of government? You know, what's the role of policy?

How can policy help? And I do think What has been proven through both the RRC, the RTO, the Power Pool is that, I mean, these— all of these things, the mechanisms exist right now for us to do economic dispatch, you know, region-wide. And so I think there's lots of— I don't think anybody's like, "No, I don't want to do it." I mean, maybe there are some, but I mean, it's really just bandwidth is there value, getting kind of through the inertia. So I do think policy helps create that imperative and sets a timeline because that's another thing we have, you know, we are all very lean organizations. We have a few people that can do this work unless we want to bring on high-paid consultants that may eat up some of the benefit of this.

Like we need to be also very realistic about what we can achieve and where we put our time. And so I do think that creating an imperative, if this is a direction we want to go, and a timeline is helpful. And then I also think ensuring that there's a regional approach, as we kind of kicked this off with, we are all, you know, I think that regional mindset exists, you know, in varying— as a whole spectrum at various utilities and even individuals within utilities. And so I do think that we are beholden to our members and our boards are beholden to our members. And so ensuring that there is a regional approach is, I think, a way, a place where policy makes sense and helps drive some of these disputes.

It can help really resolve them very clearly.

So, but yes, so if we are, if we start with like we need policy to do this. Again, we don't need it, but we might need it to actually make it happen. So Anthony, you can pick up from there. I just wanted to put a finer point on your comments. No, I agree with everything that you said.

So anyway, what, you know, the model that for doing merit order, security constrained economic dispatch within a region is that you have an independent party do that. You have a structural solution which ensures that costs are being minimized subject to reliability constraints. And that's like a structural solution that people have hit on typically, and that gives everybody comfort. You still have market monitors to check to make sure that the independent person or entity is doing a good job actually minimizing costs subject to reliability constraints.

So, you know, one of the models that people have talked a lot about is, well, we need an independent system operator, so an entity which is fully separate from the interests of any of the co-ops to move forward. And I think, you know, there's no question that that is a reasonable approach. It comes with some additional costs. Right? You're going to have to hire a bunch of folks to do the dispatching, at least at some level, and they're not going to be cheap.

And you're, you know, you've got to have kind of fully, fully manning this, the system, and providing instructions to all of the separate, the 3 separate balancing areas in terms of what to do.

So, but like that by itself is like, okay, we're introduced— wait, we have the RTO, new entity, we have the RRC, new entity, right? I can certainly anticipate concern and anxiety around having yet a third new entity to perform these functions, which is one of the reasons why in an ideal world we, we would build off of and potentially very significantly modify the existing Power Pool agreement. Like, I, you know, personally, I'm fairly indifferent to the details of that. I just want us to get there, you know, in part because I think so much of the benefits from economic dispatch We can't fully anticipate what they will be as the system evolves. I mean, one of the things where I think we know is, I mean, wearing, putting my REPAD on, is like if we're going to incorporate large-scale wind on the system, for example, it'll be a lot more efficient if we can bring all of the rail belt's generation suite to regulate those resources.

Rather than trying to do it balancing area by balancing area.

And that requires sort of real-time adjustment to operations.

So anyway, exactly how you, you know, pull this off in terms of legislation or other sort of policy push is not something I want to talk about too much. In part because I don't exactly know. But I, you know, again, my conclusion looking at this is it's going to require some policy innovation probably to get us there. One of the traps I think we always end up in is, well, is the juice worth the squeeze, right? Central Power Pool, that's all fine, but look, it's only $7 million a year.

Like, we got a lot of other things to do, as Julie said, right? That's true.

But the issue for me anyway is our current system limits the flexibility for what we can do in the future, and that seems unfortunate.

So yeah, and I agree with Anthony. I think we, we should stop thinking about it as the system that exists and start thinking about the system we want. To build? Not necessarily when I say to build being like infrastructure, you know, like I'm not talking like actually building a power plant, but just what are we, what's our future and what's the fastest way to get there? And because I think we get trapped in, well, what does our system look like right now?

And then what that does is just make sure that we have the system that we have right now. So I do think that that forward, future forward perspective is important as we wade into this.

Discussion. Great. Well, I feel bad for short-shifting our audience with their questions, although you guys did do a good job of, I think, addressing a number of these. Maybe I'll lump a few together, um, and then we could just offer a few closing remarks, um, and try and get folks back to their busy days, I'm sure. But we've got a couple questions just about Bradley and Unified Economic Dispatch's potential impacts on that power.

So we have one question just about like what's been the biggest change to dispatch patterns due to the pool and has the use of Bradley been affected? And there's a separate question that says if unified economic dispatch is considered, would Bradley also be pooled to increase efficiencies between the utilities rather than each utility independently using their take? Yeah, I mean, I think that Bradley's definitely been a factor and we've definitely made some improvements. You know, when we initially waded into this, it was just about our thermal generation, and the power pool has evolved to include our hydro as well as other renewable options that we have. So I think we're getting more sophisticated in how we use it, and I think it's a good model because as we think about— I mean, Bradley is really— I mean, it's not independent, but it's a power producer of which we share different amounts of power from.

And as we look to a potential future where there are potential larger projects or projects that, you know, say a wind farm or hydro or a coal plant or something that multiple utilities are purchasing from, then I think Bradley is a really good example. And we have become much better at how we coordinate our use of Bradley, but it's not without disagreement. I mean, I think there's lots of uses for the amazing thing that is Bradley Power. You can use it for regulation, you could use it to shave peaks, you could use it for lots of different reasons. And coming together on the best use of that for the pool is something that we're still working on, quite frankly, from a Power Pool perspective.

But there's so much opportunity there. And do we need to coordinate? I mean, we each have our own share. Can't we use it however we want? Yes.

I mean, you could take that approach. Is there a better way? Probably. And so I think there's more work to be done there, and I think adding complexity and more dynamic scheduling might, might shift that conversation too with other parties.

Too quick, Donovan.

Just wanted to make a little space. There's a few other— some of these, well, I think you made a good, great point, Anthony, just around, you know, this kind of never or oft raised question around like, is the juice worth the squeeze? And these sort of moving targets in terms of like projections for the future and then the implications for potential savings. There is a question around the E3 wind integration study and that indication that savings could be in the ballpark of $40+ million annually from unified economic dispatch. There's just a question around sort of like that magnitude and, and your takes on those.

I know that's something that maybe you wanted to try and address, Antony. Yeah, I'm not fully qualified to identify all of the so-called bad assumptions that went into that study. I mean, they were assumptions, and all assumptions in any modeling effort are always, you know, wrong, um, at some level. I will say the study assumed that there was an indefinite supply of Cook Inlet gas at a certain price point to be made available to Golden Valley. And as we know right now, that is not the case.

Right. And depending upon, say, what LNG imports cost, it— those savings may well be reduced in terms of sales north of the range. Right. And that just depends on the relative costs of diesel and LNG imports, which depends upon the contracts for LNG imports. You know, because if it's oil-based, then they're fairly correlated.

Anyway, like, it's complicated for sure.

Like, for me, what's— I will note this. When that study was rolled out at AEA, I went to that presentation, and Dan Bishop at Golden Valley made a point of saying, see, unified economic dispatch would be really great because even without any wind, savings to the system would be on the order of $40 million. And Dan is a lot smarter guy than I'll ever be, um, and he was involved in designing the study. So I think No, I think there are material savings to be had. Golden Valley's costs of generation are quite significant right now.

So what will they be in future? Who knows? But as a snapshot, assuming, assuming what was assumed, I think it's probably reasonable. Yeah. And I think, you know, to Anthony's point, it's the bigger the delta between costs, that's going to give you those bigger savings.

And so I think the E3 study for me and for the way my utility— it's more like that feasibility level. It gives you that rough order of magnitude. To get actually numbers that you could bank on, that you can make decisions on, you'd need to take that analysis down to more specific dispatching and also better numbers now. You know, like what things are shifting with gas prices, things are shifting with diesel prices. So it's a good start to say, hey, there's some real savings here, there's some real potential here, but to really actually bank on that number, we need to probably get that next level of detail.

But I think it's a good start to say there's something here that we should be paying attention to.

Great. Well, I do want to recognize that it's 1:02 now, so we've gone a bit over time, and I want to let you guys have the final word. And maybe just a few things before then, as you gather your thoughts on final words to offer to our audience. One, thanks everybody for joining us. This was an awesome turnout, and especially appreciate the folks who have stayed a few minutes extra.

We'll be recording and posting this afterwards, and so maybe some of the takeaways that I would tout, I can just, you know, provide in those sorts of follow-up communications. I will just say though that this is the first of our fall energy speaker series, and so we've got 3 more events coming up. We've actually got a winter prep fair coming coming up in Anchorage this Saturday. So, for folks who are here in Anchorage and available on Saturday from noon to 4:00 PM, we'll be hosting that family-friendly, free food, free materials, lots of partners and resources type winter prep fair at the Fairview Rec Center. So, check out our website for that.

And then, 2 weeks from today, we'll be hosting the next webinar in this series with Peter Asmus on his Alaska Microgrid Innovators book with with some familiar faces, including Chris Rose, former REIT founder, former ED, and then also Gwen Holdman and perhaps a few other speakers as well. So just wanted to tout those. And of course, we'll be letting you guys all know, but without further ado, I'll let Antony and Julie sort of send us off with their final thoughts and just sort of maybe like key points that they wanted to hammer home before we conclude for the afternoon. Yeah, I'll start because I know Antony wants the last word. Just kidding.

No, I mean, I think kind of where we left off last time was where almost I'd leave off this time is there's obvious benefits to explore. And there's, it's, you know, I think there's, as energy is shifting, there's willing participants to come to the table and understand where those benefits could be. I think as we found in the Power Pool, the devil is often in the details. And so I would advocate for a part 3, part 3 of this, um, to really get— I mean, because, and you know, this is what I should have started with, I'm not the expert here. There are people at MEA that are down in the details, they know how this works.

There's people that have thought about this a lot more than I have about what this could look like and explored that. So I think understanding what it could look like and start hammering out some of those details would be interesting, but again, I think let's look towards the future of what's possible instead of sitting in the, in the past/present and figure out, and instead looking at the limitations. I think we've got a lot of opportunity for, well, I guess what the way I'll say it is, there's lots of potential possible futures right now, and the least likely is for things to stay the same. And so as we look towards what those futures could look like. We gotta keep exploring these topics and with an eye towards collaboration among utilities.

So I'll just say, is the juice worth the squeeze? Even assuming the system is exactly the same, the answer is yes. I mean, if Golden Valley and Chugach are able to split almost $7 million a year and going forward that number will increase as gas costs increase.

That pays for a lot of human time to work out the details. The main barrier is human time and expertise. So you can pay for a lot of consultants for $7 million a year as an invest— you know, $7 million as an investment to get you to a new place. So I mean, I think, you know, it could— there be Yeah, so the answer is, like, this just strikes me as a no-brainer in terms of getting to a more efficient system. The investment is worth it.

It's just keeping everybody's attention and focus of the limited resources that people have to move forward. There was a question in the chat, which I think is a good one, which is if the state is going to do matching for these considerable federal dollars that is— that are coming in for transmission? Should we get unified economic dispatch as a price? And, you know, again, putting on my advocate's hat is yes, absolutely we should, because one of the benefits of more transmission deconstraining the system to the extent that it's constrained is we can get more beneficial economic transactions. So if the state is going to invest in that possibility, then we should make sure we invest in the full suite of institutions that are required to realize the prize.

So, well said, both of you. Thank you again for spending your time with us. Thanks to the audience. We had so many people stick around, 6 minutes past the hour, so I'll let you guys get back to it. We'll be posting this recording afterwards.

Thank you all for joining us and for your attention to these important energy issues, and we'll look forward to seeing you at another installment of this speaker series real soon. But with that, enjoy the rest of your Wednesdays, and we'll talk to you real soon. Thanks, everybody. Thanks.