Forwarding to other page

Since election to the GVEA Board, I will be using facebook.com/newman.for.gvea for further updates. As a director on the board, my focus will be encouraging communication from within. I encourage your participation.

Newman elected to GVEA board for District 4

After a spirited and active campaign, Gary Newman was elected to the GVEA board to represent District 4 by 55% with 45% for incumbent Frank Eagle. Gary is ready to serve the members when sworn in on June 22. Frank wished Gary well and they will remain friends. The vote was 671 to 561 with an additional 133 ballots not counted because they weren't signed on the outside envelope. This is very common with prior votes as well. Gary will be working to change this disenfranchisement of members.

RCA on Railbelt Utilities working together

he Regulatory Commission of Alaska is holding a special meeting in Anchorage Wed. June 3. They will be discussing their ability to encourage Railbelt utilities to work together for the purpose of shared transmission and generation efficiencies. Complex geeky stuff, To my knowledge, this Anchorage based meeting isn't audio-conferenced except by advance request. From reading the materials, Chugach Electric has one proposal and Anchorage's Municipal Light and Power has another. All seem to agree that working together for dispatch and improved transmission capacities can lead to cost savings, but the devil is in the details. I was a bit surprised at the strident tone of the response by the Independent Power Producers Association. You can read/download the documents here.

Upcoming issues for the GVEA board

Here are a few substantive upcoming issues for GVEA. Rate changes upcoming in 2016 will set the bar for years and the result needs to be fair to every class of service. With 100 mw of inexpensive coal and up to 24 mw of wind, we shouldn’t be using our oil fired generation or buying economy natural gas fired energy from Southcentral utilities much except in winter. this is a time when Southcentral utilities ALL have excess generation capacity and likely willing to sell power relatively cheap to help pay the debt on their expansions, much as we are doing the same with ours. The naptha fuel that GVEA gets from PetroStar Refinery for use in its 60 mw co-fired generation unit (LM 6000)is very inexpensive, less than what natural gas would likely be purchased for. Whether it stays low is anyone's guess, certainly not in GVEA's control (see Economist article) Debt is always on my mind, but the die has been cast with $71 mm for Eva Creek Wind Farm and $183 mm for Healy 2. Long term debt has been down to as low as $280 million before. While it builds equity as we pay it off, that's about $50 million a year in debt service. How to absorb additional renewably generated electricity from independent power producers is out there as well. Can the newer battery bank (50%) of BESS (big-ass battery storage) be reconfigured to be used as storage for these forms of energy for the betterment of the system and producer?

District 4 Please Vote

I haven't commented here on campaign issues because I don't think this is the forum, however I do encourage all District 4 members to take a few minutes to read about the candidates, examine our qualifications, and vote, if you haven't already. Last minute votes are accepted on-line up to 5 pm on June 9, 2015. Mailed ballots need to be received by June 9.

Newman running for GVEA Board District 4

I guess it is official now - I am a candidate for the GVEA board of directors District 4 which includes Steese East, Chena Hot Springs, Fox, Shannon Park, Island Homes, Hamilton Acres and the core area of downtown Fairbanks.

I have my website at gvea.chena.org and you are welcome to like my Facebook page Newman for GVEA.

Two way communication and transparency have been a mainstay of my advocacy for GVEA for decades - I don't see that changing. Reliability, keeping rates reasonable, trying to help moderate our increasing debt load are also pretty important tasks for the board.

Ballots will be mailed out May 8 with a month to get them back to GVEA. In the next couple months, I will be talking with our members to hear their concerns and let members hear from me as well. I will of course be at the annual meeting Wed. April 29, 2015, this year at Lathrop High School's Hering Auditorium.

I'm looking forward to this effort to help our co-op. It is a demanding effort for anyone serving on the board and I now have the time and decades of involvement to be able to give back to GVEA.

Feel free to contact me if you want to chat: gvea@chena.org or 907-488-2001

Green Power Advisory Board

I was going through some of my files and ran across this blast from the past: the Final Report of the Green Power Advisory Board (GPAC) March 2004. It might make some interesting reading for some. To my knowledge, the GPAC hasn't met of late.

Energy charge reduced due to low international oil prices

With the price of oil based fuel down significantly, GVEA's energy charge dropped from $0.09947/kwh to $0.07111/kwh, a welcome bit of relief. Fuel oil also has dropped significantly. We paid $3.51/gal for No. 2 fuel oil in November. Current price is $2.67/gal. Time to top off.

Candidates for Board seats Districts 4 and 7

There were two nominees each for board seats up for election this year: District 4 includes Steese East, Fox, Chena Hot Springs, Island Homes and a good part of the downtown core. Gary Newman, long time GVEA involved member-advocate and originator of this blog, posting as Common Sense Frank Eagle, incumbent board member, running after his first term District 7 includes the area down the Parks Hwy: Nenana, Healy, McKinley Park Long time incumbent Bill Nordmark Keith Walters, retired Usibelli superintendent While there are still pending interviews with the nominating committee during the next month and final selection by Feb. 13, it seems pretty likely that these will be the final nominees. Voting takes place by mail or on line starting in early May. The annual GVEA meeting is scheduled for April at Hering Auditorium (Lathrop High School). I will offer that I am running as I have been able to clear time to be able to serve. Being a responsible board member is quite demanding, equivalent to a 25% to 50% of a full time job. While I have attended around 200 board meetings in the past few decades and, as an active member-owner of GVEA, I have succeeded in a number of initiatives to increase transparency to the membership and encourage sensible decisions, there is more to be done that can't be done externally. I'll have more on my future-looking perspective and goals in other forums.