Community Solar Cracks Gas Crisis in Alaska — Episode 236 of Local Energy Rules

Alex Petkanas:
If you have a generation system that needs to come offline soon, framing community solar as part of the replacement strategy, I think was really a big part of how we got people on board.

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John Farrell:
In 2024, Alaska became the 20th state to adopt open market community solar legislation. But how is the so-called Rail Belt of interconnected utilities and a natural gas shortage responsible for cooking up support for this policy? Joining me in April, 2025, Natalie Kiley-Bergen, energy lead with the Alaska Public Interest Research Group, and Alex Petkanas, Climate and Clean Energy program manager with the Alaska Center discussed two delicious foods and a whole lot of tasty details about the forthcoming community solar program. I’m John Farrell, director of the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and this is Local Energy Rules, a podcast about monopoly, power, energy, democracy, and how communities can take charge to transform the energy system.

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John Farrell:
Natalie and Alex, welcome to Local Energy Rules.

Alex Petkanas:
Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you.

John Farrell:
So this is my favorite question to ask everybody, which is funny. I obviously care about the energy topic, but Natalie, what interested you, you in doing environmental planning and infrastructure and particularly working in Alaska or living there? And I guess I also want to ask you what’s the most recent thing you made at craft night?

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Yeah, thanks. So I was drawn to environmental planning in Alaska because it’s a place that felt really interdisciplinary from the very beginning. I went to college in the northeast and was a history and biology double major and was always trying to talk about biology and history class and history and biology class and didn’t always go over well. And then I took an Arctic Studies class and I was able to talk about both and I’m really drawn to the infrastructure system, grew up around a lot of engineers and architects and while I’m more of an interdisciplinary environmental scientist that was a real draw and was fortunate about six years ago, got a job and was able to move up here and I’ve been doing this work ever since. My most recent craft night — I actually brought a cake as a craft. I was going to a gathering the following day and needed to pull a cake together and it worked really well. So that was a new craft for me, but I was glad I did it.

John Farrell:
That’s awesome. Please tell us what kind of cake you made.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Okay. It was a raspberry hazelnut four-layer cake. The first time I’ve ever tried to do that.

John Farrell:
Wow, that sounds amazing. I know I asked earlier before we started recording about a photo that would go with the podcast, but now I want to see a photo of that cake as well if you’re willing to share it. That sounds incredible.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Can do.

John Farrell:
Alex, let me just turn to you. What motivated you to get into clean energy and climate work, and what’s the best dish that you’ve most recently shared with folks?

Alex Petkanas:
Yeah, thanks. I think like many people, I can feel the big overwhelming fear around the realities of climate change. It’s such a massive issue to try to tackle and I’ve done policy advocacy in a number of spheres, but getting into clean energy advocacy specifically has felt like an opportunity to be part of the problem solving and that feels really exciting. I think there are so many ways to engage on climate issues including trying to stop bad projects or building community resilience, but for me, doing this work of trying to advocate for adding new clean energy generation to our grid feels like a really useful and tangible thing for me to engage in. So the best dish I’ve made recently that I’ve shared with people is my family’s Spanakopita recipe. I only make it like once or twice a year. It’s big, it’s quite an ordeal because we do our own filo from scratch, but I just made it a few weeks ago and shared it with some friends and then brought the leftovers to the office and it was great.

John Farrell:
That sounds amazing. I am now hungry doing this podcast recording, which is a mistake for me to ask about food, but awesome examples. Well, let’s dive in on the topic here of community solar. So Alaska is the 20th state by my count to pass enabling legislation for community solar with the caveat there that ILSR only counts programs that allow for third party ownership. So sometimes the numbers are a little different, but for many states it’s an important tool, community solar is, to provide solar access to those who don’t own a sunny rooftop or just need a more affordable method to go solar. But what reasons did lawmakers or you have and advocacy have for wanting to bring this solar strategy to Alaska? I’ll go to Alex first just randomly and just to encourage you, feel free to both weigh in on questions or if you feel like the other person got it, you don’t have to. Alex, let’s go to you.

Alex Petkanas:
Great. Yeah, I will start with a little bit of context and I’m sure Natalie can add some more of the technical specifics here. But in Alaska, we have a number of different grids including a bunch of small microgrids that are really isolated, but I want to talk about our main grid, which is often referred to as the Rail Belt. This is our largest grid and it gets the vast majority of its energy from natural gas that has been sourced locally for quite some time. The reason this context is really important is that that local supply is running out or the corporation that provides it has said that they will not be able to provide it after contracts end over the next few years for the major utilities on the Rail Belt. And because of that, we’re in a moment where we have to transition, we have to bring new generation online. And so I think that was a big part of the conversation when we were talking with legislators about why we would want to open up this new option for people. This is one way to bring new generation online in a moment when we really desperately need to do that.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Thanks Alex. Yeah, what we call it here locally is the Cook Inlet gas crisis. Cook Inlet is where the natural gas is sourced is a real driver behind energy decisions and particularly for the electric system, which uses about 80% of generation comes from natural gas for about 80% of the state, which stretches from Homer on the Kenai Peninsula all the way through Anchorage, south central area to Fairbanks, interior Alaska. So that’s the Rail Belt system that Alex mentioned and covers about 80% of folks. And just from the PIRG perspective, we’re a public interest research group, we’re a consumer advocacy entity and we are really drawn to this work because of the equity issues and the opportunities for consumer savings to provide community solar to folks that, as you said, don’t have a sunny rooftop, don’t own their rooftop, are renters. And that’s a really important meaningful opportunity to us. It came to us as a common sense legislation and resonated with a lot of legislators in that way as we’ve had residential rooftop net metering solar opportunities for years now. And the other accelerating aspect is that we were able to connect with the Coalition for Community Solar Access and if you’re looking to get inspired and motivated around enabling legislation for community solar, they are the place to start.

John Farrell:
That’s great. You kind of already started to provide an answer to this about Alaska having a somewhat unique energy situation when you have obviously natural deposits of fossil fuels like gas and oil, you have remote off-grid communities. Are there elements of this policy that address that specific energy need? You already kind of talked about this sort of the loss of this fuel supply from natural gas, but are there other design features in this legislation that feel like they’re really tailored to Alaska?

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Yeah, I’ll jump in with a few aspects. So in addition to the local gas supply for the Rail Belt system, it’s also important to mention that the Rail Belt system is run by eight generation transmission and distribution rural electric co-ops. So four of those co-ops across the system and they are all applicable under the residential net metering solar legislation. And so this legislation mirrors the rooftop solar legislation now statute that only applies to utilities and load service serving areas that are of a certain size. That way the complexities of bringing these systems onto really small microgrids aren’t directly implicated by this legislation and by this act, those systems actually operate with community scale solar that’s not directly virtually net metered, but there’s an incredible emerging world of tribal independent power producers emerging and being developed in numerous microgrid communities in Alaska. And this legislation is particularly for these larger, for our state, the large urban rural electric co-ops.

Alex Petkanas:
One small thing that I was thinking about with this question is that our bill or our legislation that is now a statute is a community energy policy and is not limited to solar. We do have a lot of small rivers and streams and there are people who have done small run of river hydro with limited fish impacts. And I think that is really significant and interesting that that’s potentially included when we are at the implementation stage is that projects like that could be a part of serving a community and not just something that someone does either with the utility or totally off grid.

John Farrell:
That is really exciting. I’m just glad you mentioned that because one of the things that has been so baffling about the policies in all these other states is that yes, solar is a technology that obviously people kind of understand. It’s like, oh, there’s a panel on a roof or in a field that creates electricity, but there’s no reason why it has to be limited to that technology. In fact, some of the first community energy that I encountered in my career at ILSR, which now spans much longer than it should have probably was community wind. And so I’ve always been surprised that there aren’t more multi-technology policies like this. So it’s very exciting to hear that you have other options other than just solar.

Alex Petkanas:
If I could just add one thing to that that is interesting about our natural resources here is that we have, obviously we live in a place where we get a lot of sun for a good portion of the year and it can provide an incredible amount of energy and then there’s a portion of the year that has less sun and I think people can feel nervous about that, but we have a lot of access to wind and that wind actually peaks in the winter here. And so I think just to take a step back and think about the broader balancing of our system is that we have different natural resources that we can use at different points in the year to serve us.

John Farrell:
So maybe just to specifically, can you do community wind under this policy or is that not actually going to be part of it?

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Yeah, there’s an extensive list of the different technologies in statute now and it’s always part of the somewhat political aspects of energy work here is what mechanisms, what generation sources are we counting and it is falling under our more renewable suite of energy generation, so wind is in there hydro, and there’s other more advanced technologies that if someone figures out they can certainly try.

John Farrell:
Very cool. Fusion power probably, right? I can’t wait to see the first community fusion plant.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
We might put fusion under our more clean suite. We have a renewable suite and a clean suite. So yeah, I think that’s where that lands.

John Farrell:
Sounds good. There was a story in Solar Power World, Alex that quoted one of your colleagues mentioning how the Alaska Center was hearing from residents who couldn’t participate in solarized campaigns that y’all are involved in because they were renters. I guess I’m just kind of curious, given that history of working on solarized, do you have some sense of how many people might now be able to get access to solar or some other kind of community renewable energy technology due to this legislation that were really not going to have that option before when it was all about individual ownership?

Alex Petkanas:
Yeah, thanks for this question. The Alaska Center has run solarized campaigns and I want to just talk a little bit about those because it was a really exciting program and it ran in a few different places in Alaska and over the course of a six year period, organizers would go out and do community events, direct canvassing and other kinds of outreach to find folks who are interested in installing solar on their rooftops and get neighborhoods together to go in on a larger scale project with a developer that could help get discounts. And it was really successful and it resulted in 535 installations over that six year period, which feels like a really big win. But definitely one of the things that people heard or that organizers heard was from renters and other people in the community who are really interested in solar power and especially who see the value of solar power in Alaska but weren’t able to participate either because they’re renters or they just could not afford that upfront cost.
And so in terms of who this might be opening up access to, I would say around 35% of Alaskans are renting right now, and so they don’t own their homes. Even if they had that upfront funding, they would not be able to put solar on the buildings they’re living in. And then in 2023, about 36% of Alaskans were classified as low and moderate income. And so that’s a significant portion of Alaskans who certainly there’s some overlap in those numbers. So I don’t know what the total number of folks who this potentially could open up access to is, but it’s a really exciting moment for people who can’t just put solar on their own house. And then of course, as both of you have mentioned, this also opens up access to people who maybe have the funding, maybe own their home, but they’re not in an optimal location for solar.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
I’ll add just a piece to the numbers aspect. AKPIRG set out a goal that we want to see 50 megawatts of community solar and distributed community energy coming onto the grid in the next few years in the emergence of this program. And if that’s 50,000 kilowatts, if folks are subscribing from two to four kilowatts, we see 10,000 to 20,000 Alaskans benefiting from this program if we meet that goal. And the timing is really great with the federal funding programs that are still holding on, like Solar For All, and the tax credits. And so if all those things stay in place and line up, we could really see those numbers met.

John Farrell:
Terrific. I’m kind of curious about the politics of the bill’s passage. So in a lot of states, dominant electric utilities are investor owned utilities and they oppose community solar because it has this potential to reduce utility shareholder profits. That’s certainly been the case actually in Minnesota right now as we get near the end of session, there’s a bill to sunset the community solar program driven largely by the investor owned utility, but as you already gave that helpful context, you have here utilities that are almost entirely cooperatives as part of that. You described line maybe was the term, you said something with a belt and I missed it about the kind of the utility service territory you’re talking about. Without getting into the weeds there, did you see much opposition? Did you have unexpected allies? Was it partisan? What was that process like there? Given that you have a very different utility structure than most states that are considering this policy?

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Yeah, I would say the type of utilities that we’re working with for the electric system on the Rail Belt for the beltway, it would also be a fun name. Part of the momentum for this legislation is that member owners, the rate payers who are also member owners, were pushing utilities for community solar and community energy options. And so the accountability to the member owner base helped create collaborative relationships and the opportunity to work together to figure out how we could build legislation and to push each other to understand our priorities and move it through the legislature. We also have a pretty unique legislature dynamic. We currently have in both chambers a bipartisan majority coalition and you have really different dynamics and priorities between Rail Belt legislators, folks representing constituencies that are predominantly microgrids. And so how you bring folks together looks a little bit different and really needs to reflect the context of the infrastructure in the communities that folks are representing.
Also, we have these four electric co-ops. They work together. They do not have the exact same perspective. They do not always agree. They have notoriously at times in the past, very blatantly not agreed. And so getting each utility on board is a different animal and a different process and a different approach. And this effort started really early. It took multiple years. A large coalition was built and worked consistently and coordinated across the board. I really need to give a lot of credit to my colleague Phil White, who did a ton of work behind that early days, bringing the legislation together and working closely with utilities to figure out their sticking points and their must have requirements.

Alex Petkanas:
Yeah, I’ll add a little bit about just what the final votes looked like. I think that’s fun. On the senate side, this bill passed unanimously, which was really exciting and we heard folks from various ideologies speak in favor of this bill. And on the house side it ended up passing I think 24 to 15. So this was a moment that a lot of folks could get behind that have, like Natalie said, really different places they’re representing and different interests. But I think because of a lot of the work that was done to lay the groundwork ahead of time and because of the momentum coming from the largest utility on the Rail Belt, Chugach Electric is currently launching their own utility owned community solar program and they did send in a letter of support for the bill and openly support it and thought that felt really significant in our ability to move it forward was that they were bought in and they gave their feedback, like Natalie said, about what they would approve of and what they wouldn’t. And that certainly shaped the outcome of the bill, but having that largest utility buy-in combined with the pressure from the natural gas shortage and combined with member owners and constituents across the state calling in and saying that they were interested in this, I think all those things combined really made it ultimately not a partisan issue.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
This is inspiring a lot of little things if it’s okay to add on. Alaska’s a pretty revenue poor state at the state budget level and we’ve been having really challenging fiscal circumstances the last few years and this bill costs functionally $0. Just there is some cost for the regulatory commission, our public utility commission here to set it up, but because it’s enabling legislation, it’s not particularly expensive. And so that’s always the conversation helps get the conversation started when you’re not looking for the state to fund something significant. It was also a really, energy was a top line issue for that session and we had, in the face of the Cook Inlet gas crisis, we also spurred the focus, but we also had a renewable portfolio standard that was being considered that didn’t end up making it all the way, but all of the utilities came together and figured out and worked with the legislature and have created a Rail Belt transmission, a regional transmission organization, which is really new for us during last session.
We are not interconnected to the national system, the national grid, so we’re not under FERC standards, we’re not subject to much NERC behavior. We don’t have an independent system operator, we don’t have any of that sort of structure. And so that was a really big step. And it also in the kind of perspective dynamics was a period where we really learned that working with a given utility means not only working with one piece of the utility, but you have to work with making sure that management and the key staff working on a policy board of directors and whoever’s representing that utility in Juno, our capital, are all on the same page and saying comparable things. We learned through a variety of policies that sometimes directors versus management versus what’s present in the capital can have slight differences in making sure that you’re working with all of those pieces so that the understanding is consistent was a huge learning and has informed our progress moving forward. I don’t know, Alex, if you feel it’s okay to put that insider finding out in the public.

Alex Petkanas:
Yeah, I think as you said, it is totally appropriate and true. And I’ll add one more thing on the political aspect of this, which is that of course ultimately the bill was signed into law by Governor Dunleavy and we do not always agree. He has a very all of the above energy approach and I think it’s been interesting from my perspective to find those folks who are saying all of the above who actually are committed to that and will support renewable energy development in addition to whatever they might be doing on fossil fuels. And so yeah, he of course lives in Alaska. He has solar panels on his own home. He knows that the sun is a resource here and also saw the value of bringing private investment into building new generation here in a moment where we really, really need that new generation. So it’s interesting to be aligned and have him sign this into law and we were excited to be there on the day of the bill signing

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
A small anecdote from the bill signing. I was standing by our governor’s also very tall, so I was in the shadows of our governor as he was talking with the head of the state energy authority, had his solar panel production up and open on his phone showing the director of the energy authority how his panels were doing. It was August, so it was prime time for that and he thought it was, I overheard him telling director of the energy authority how cool it was that the Chugach, the anchor Anchorage area utility’s, electric truck powered the couple of things for the bill signing. And so it was a really fun moment to hear very genuinely just as a bystander that he finds, finds these technologies exciting. People are very nuanced.

John Farrell:
I love that. Or maybe when we get to the tips that you can offer to folks in other states, it’s get solar panels on the governor’s roof first before advocating for community solar maybe connected to those solar ice campaigns you’re working on. Alex with the Alaska Center.

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John Farrell:
We are going to take a short break. When we come back, I ask my guests about the program criteria, whether it includes any carve outs for low income participation, and ask what advice Natalie and Alex have for those who are working on community solar elsewhere. You are listening to a local Energy Rules podcast with Natalie Kiley-Bergen, energy lead with the Alaska Public Interest Research Group, and Alex Petkanas, Climate and Clean Energy program manager with the Alaska Center.
Hey, thanks for listening to Local Energy Rules. We’re so glad you’re here. If you like what you’ve heard, please help other folks find us by giving the show a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Five stars if you think we’ve earned it. As a bonus, I’ll gladly read your review aloud on the show if it includes an energy related joke or pun. Now back to the program.

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John Farrell:
So one aspect of the legislation I thought was interesting is that some of the key program rules such as the size of projects and the amount of capacity that will be allowed under the program look like they’ve been left to the utilities to determine, do you expect to get rules that allow for capturing economies of scale and project size and that allow for enough development? You mentioned Natalie, your goal of 50 megawatts to contribute significantly to Alaska’s electricity needs. How confident are you that in the implementation side of this that things will come out with a program that really fits with the goals that you had in mind as you were pursuing it?

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Yeah, I think that’s one of the key aspects of this legislation is how much was left to the regulatory process and working through the public utility commission just for the politics dynamic. That was a real aspect of compromise to get the bill passed and there was substantial changes throughout the process in order to get that broader support. I think we are feeling pretty optimistic about the regulations process. At a commission meeting on the previous Wednesday, they announced they had initial draft regulations, a really extensive comment period this winter and now have new revised and informed from the common period draft regulations and they seem pretty favorable. The key concerns are the maximum for a specific solar project, what’s that size, and then for each utility on the system, total megawatts, do they have a limit of how many megawatts that they’re going to do. And then the credit, is it full retail rate comparable to our net metering?
We currently have monthly net metering and it’s looking like it’s going to be pretty favorable with that larger credit rate. Initially no size limit on specific arrays. We were really pushing for five megawatt size limits to be the largest array to kind of thread that needle, but we’ll see the full regulations any day now and then have another extensive comment period. But what really made the difference in the regulations process and in the process this fall and winter is that we were able to connect with the Department of Energy’s National Community Solar Partnership and AKPIRG put in a technical assistance request and was able to bring in folks from NREL and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to run a multi-part webinar and stakeholder exchange to actually talk through the aspects of regulations, learn best practices from other states, and get really dialed in. And we were fortunate, this was another place where multiple utilities signed a letter of support for the application and for just the technical assistance and then showed up and were in the room.
We had over a dozen independent power producers, predominantly from the lower 48 who joined because they were so interested in the market and the opportunity coming here. And then we had tribal representation, advocacy groups, utilities, state agencies where there are folks that are trying to implement federal funding that involves community solar. So I just want to give a huge thank you and shout out to the folks at NREL and at DOE and the National Community Solar Partnership because that was really phenomenal. And when there were about a dozen of us that went into the room for the actual conference at the commission, it was a really collaborative, productive conversation. We had already learned a lot about each other and what we were concerned about and what we were looking for. And so when we actually sat down with commissioners and commission staff, we had a lot of consensus to share and a better understanding of the places that we didn’t exactly agree. And a real incredible aspect is that we pulled this last part of the workshop series off the week of inauguration in January, which in hindsight was just incredible timing that it all came off without a hitch and we were able to have the full series

John Farrell:
And perhaps rather lucky too, given the way that the current administration has been approaching issues like this that they perceive as problematic. Definitely not, as you mentioned, one of you mentioned earlier, maybe not the kind of administration that says all of the above energy and actually believes in it.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Absolutely. I got an email from one of the folks we worked with and I was glad to see that they were, at least for now, still engaged and I’ve started getting National Community Solar Partnership weekly updates again. So I wasn’t sure I was going to shake out, but at least for now that office is still around to some extent. I don’t know all the parameters.

John Farrell:
That’s great to hear about how it was served as a resource though. That really is wonderful.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Some aspects of our utilities are particularly concerned about cross-subsidization and cost shifting from any sort of net metering. These folks vote in a contingent and are maybe less all of the above oriented as well. But also we find that some folks are overly focused on cost shifting specific to net metering than generally the many ways in which costs are not all actually the same for the energy system.

John Farrell:
I’m glad you brought that up because it kind of actually feeds into this next question about elements of the legislation that might’ve been focused on ensuring access for low to moderate income participants. Because one of the issues with solar of course is that and any technology is that early adopters tend to be people who have the money to do it. We’ve seen a lot of other states have specific rules for low and moderate income access and curious what’s been written into this legislation or what’s coming through in terms of the draft rules that are going to help make sure that everybody can participate.

Alex Petkanas:
Yeah, that’s something we definitely wanted to see in there that didn’t make it into the final statute. And we did get, obviously we got some pushback on that throughout the process from various legislators and other folks who would be interacting with this, including some comments that are less pointed maybe about concern around defining LMI at the state level and managing those carve-outs. I will say it’s certainly something we’ve continued to raise to be on the record supporting and we are trying to think creatively about once we’re in the implementation stage, what can we do to support these projects being built and subscribed to in a way that still helps our most vulnerable communities.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Yeah, I’ll add that, yeah, that was in earlier versions of the legislation and that those hard aspects of compromise that I referred to in order to get the legislation through, this was a part of a significant rewrite that happened during the session that the legislation passed in order to get it all the way through. And an area of optimism that we have is how the federally funded programs like Solar for All have their own tie-ins to low and moderate income demographics. And so the areas of focus for the first projects that might come on from state agencies and local entities will have those layers to it. And also if there’s opportunities to tie things into any of the other federal funding with low and moderate income aspects like the Home Energy Rebates Program, the Tribal Home Energy Rebates Program is big here too. And so we’re looking to see how we can weave those aspects together to ensure that the predominant folks being served by this program are low and moderate income folks.

John Farrell:
One way that I’ve sometimes seen this show up, and we just actually updated our resource on Connecticut’s community solar program and a fascinating aspect of it is that the utilities automatically subscribe low income participants to projects there. And I’ve also heard of this where community action agencies or the state agency that operates energy assistance, which is passing through federal dollars under what’s called ‘LIHEAP’ to folks who can’t pay their bills, can be enrolled as a way to instead of having to procure or appropriate money every year to help people who need energy assistance basically creating a permanent pool of resources because the solar generates revenue by producing electricity. Has there been any discussion of somehow using some of those tie-ins to existing programs that serve low income folks or do you think any possibility for that within the regulatory process?

Alex Petkanas:
I don’t think that we’ve talked about that specifically yet. And one thing I want to name about our current context is that in different parts of the Rail Belt energy costs are higher or lower. And for some of us here in Chugach where community energy is coming on through a utility owned program, there will be a cost of subscribing to that, that right now will actually cost slightly more than your generic subscription to a utility. I think that that is likely to shift in the next few years as we are importing LNG, that will come at a much higher price and will change the dynamics of what our energy locally costs. And the reason I want to name that is that we know that community solar programs have lowered energy prices for people in many states and expect that to be the case in some regions, but right now it isn’t true everywhere. And so I’m wondering whether for the example of the existing utility owned program signing people up right now doesn’t immediately save money. And so maybe as we start to build these programs in different ways, managed differently and also in different regions, that sort of automatic subscription might make more sense.

John Farrell:
Yeah, I can definitely see you not wanting to sign people up and making them pay more when they’re already energy burdened.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
Yeah, this specific community solar project has been a big aspect of the discussion around community solar and there are some nuances to why it’s a little bit more expensive right now. First off that it’s quite small is a half megawatt for a pretty large utility, and so the overhead dynamics are pretty challenging. And another reason why having the option for larger systems like five megawatt systems helping improve the economies of scale for this size of project, we also are in the process of finalizing report on energy burden, so the amount of income folks are spending on their utilities and the Anchorage South Central area where this larger Chugach utility is actually pays a little bit below national average at this moment for their utility and their energy burdens. A lot of the rest of the state and the microgrid communities in particular, those that depend on fly in and barge in diesel are paying phenomenally high rates and have incredibly high energy burdens.
But even parts of the interior that are on the system pay more than South Central. And that dynamic is, as Alex said, expected to change as imported gas could be 30% more, 50% more. We haven’t seen firm numbers, but those projections will really increase the cost of both electricity and heat. We depend on natural gas here for heat predominantly as well. And we’re working on how to explain the angle where subscribing now will save you money because you’ll be in the program and in the system and locked in before gas prices go up. But as gas prices go up, it’ll make the economics even more favorable for these really stable, higher upfront investment, stable energy cost systems. And just since we’re bringing up LIHEAP, there’s a lot of work being done. The LIHEAP staff across the country have been targeted by the executive administration. There’s a lot of advocacy and support and work going on to reinstate staff, ensure this program survives and make sure that for the places and the demographics and the communities that are paying incredibly high energy rates and have those really high energy burdens, that they’re getting basic assistance to be able to make, not be forced to make the impossible choices between things like keeping your heat and lights on versus putting food on the table.

John Farrell:
So we kind touched on this before, but with getting solar on the Governor’s house, for example, I love that anecdote about him showing off the production on his solar app during your signing ceremony. Do you have any recommendations for those who are living in states without community solar laws? What are some of the keys to success? What worked? What did you feel like worked well in your process of getting that bill through the legislature and then as you’ve worked on the program rules to make sure that the program comes out with something that is actually a benefit to people?

Alex Petkanas:
I think we’ve talked a lot about how we’re in this forced transition in Alaska on the Rail Belt because of our natural gas shortage. And so I was thinking about what could that translate to in other states? And I would recommend trying to track or trying to tie community solar to what infrastructure needs to be replaced, right? If you have a generation system that needs to come offline soon, framing community solar as part of the replacement strategy, I think was really a big part of how we got people on board. That, and then obviously building a coalition. Natalie and I work at different organizations. We worked with a number of organizations here and also, yes, spoke with experts from outside of the state who have done a lot of this and can give real insight to what the bill should look like and talked with utilities and all the other players along the way, which can be really difficult and can result in not the exact bill that you might dream of, but ultimately also means getting these projects online. So I think being open to compromising coalition is a big piece of it.

Natalie Kiley-Bergen:
I already highlighted some of mine, but in our perspective, the first step is to connect with the Coalition for Community Solar Access. They have template legislation, they have folks focused regionally with contextual expertise and they really, they’ve done this in a lot of states at both the legislative level and the regulatory level and are a great place for support. Same thing with the National Community Solar Partnership. As long as it’s there and available, definitely take advantage and work with that community of folks that are really knowledgeable because one state doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel and start from zero. You can pick up from what other states have done and improve on what didn’t quite work. Nothing is perfect and it’s really great to be in the middle of the pack. Then you’ve learned from what’s happened and are able to set an example like making it community energy rather than solar moving forward.
And I think the place that I get most excited is remembering that it’s not just legislation, it’s not just a bill and it’s not just the legislature that the cycle of getting legislation drafted and passed needs to be completed by engaging thoroughly in the regulatory process and then, following the regulatory process, the implementation process. We’ll never be done, but we’re definitely not even done with this phase until we’ve got double digit megawatts coming out of these regulations moving forward. And yeah, the other thing I’d name is from connecting with folks doing similar work in different states, I think that choice of how collaborative you want to be with utilities is a hard one. It’s a lot more straightforward when you’re a member owner of one of the utilities that you’re working with. And the dynamics, if you were dealing with investor owned utilities and profits and shareholder dynamics would be really different. And so it’s not necessarily ethical or available or feasible for every organization, but it is something to really thoroughly consider whether creating a collaborative, you can be friends and hold each other accountable and they’ll end up asking you to write a letter for support for something and you have to make a decision and you’ll end up asking them to write a letter of support and you kind of have to decide what kind of relationship you want to cultivate.

John Farrell:
Well, Natalie and Alex, thank you so much for joining me to talk about community in Alaska. It’s been a pleasure and I appreciate all your advice. Natalie, I’m very tempted to just put the one thing you said there, “We’ll never be done.” Although that might warn people off, but it is a good reminder that it’s not just about the legislation, but thank you both for taking the time to talk to me about this and for sharing the experience you had successfully getting community solar through the legislature.

Alex Petkanas:
Thanks for having us. This is great.

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John Farrell:
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Local Energy Rules, where I spoke about Alaska’s new community solar program with Natalie Kiley-Bergen, Energy Lead with the Alaska Public Interest Research Group (AKPIRG) and Alex Petkanas, Climate & Clean Energy Program Manager of The Alaska Center.
On the show page, you’ll find a news story about the legislation’s passage and a link to the regulatory proceeding where the program rules are being developed. We’ll also have a link to ILSR’s Alaska community solar policy page and our other community solar resources, including our national tracker and links to other state policies.
Local Energy Rules is produced by myself and Ingrid Behrsin, with editing provided by audio engineer Drew Birschbach. Tune back into Local Energy Rules every two weeks to hear how we can take on concentrated power to transform the energy system. Until next time, keep your energy local, and thanks for listening.