**Title**: Energy in the North - Brian Hickey
**Date**: March 4, 2026
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Brian Hickey

00:00:00:12 - 00:00:14:11 [Brian Hickey] If you have 200MW of wind up at Murphy Dome, and Fairbanks can't handle all that wind in the summertime. So they need to have somebody else to contractually purchase it. But if it can't get moved to the central region reliably, people aren't going to sign up for it.

00:00:14:11 - 00:00:54:12 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North. I speak to Brian Hickey, the general manager of Seward Electric Association. Brian also previously held the position of executive director for the Railbelt Regional Coordination. The AVÀÇÂÛ̳ Railbelt travels around 700 miles from Fairbanks to Anchorage, to Seward, and to Homer. The generation portfolio includes around 85%, coming from mostly natural gas and some coal, and the remaining 15% comes from renewables, mostly hydropower and some wind and solar. I started the conversation by asking Brian if he felt that mix made the Railbelt diversified, and if not, what would it take to make it more so?

00:00:54:12 - 00:02:10:10 [Brian Hickey] You know, I would say we don't have adequate energy or fuel fuel supply diversification. You know, we generate about 80% of our electricity from cooking that natural gas. And you got to keep in mind, we also heat our homes with that same fuel source. So and we heat, you know, through boilers and stuff that not electric heat. So that gas has to do, those two things and I would say from a regulatory perspective, if there are gas shortages, the heating takes precedence over the electricity. So as electric folks, we have to realize we're not first in line for the gas coming out of Cook Inlet as it gets shorter in supply. So, no, I don't think we have enough diversification. Underlying that problem is the problem of transmission. And because when you don't have adequate capability to move power between regions as projects become developable that might have a different fuel source, they're often constrained and not developed because the cost of building that transmission line to get it to the load, I would say breaks the cost benefit ratio, right, if you have to build the transmission. And so, throughout the world, grids. And I'll talk about the U.S.. FERC realized that

00:02:10:10 - 00:02:29:13 [Amanda Byrd] So this is FERC, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and that order 888, in 1996, which required open access, and then later FERC order 2000 in 1999, which incentivized the formation of the regional transmission organizations and markets.

00:02:29:13 - 00:05:03:13 [Brian Hickey] They began, trying to incentivize transmission construction, deregulate it through regulations that require folks to allow the people to use the transmission and to make sure that people who built transmission get paid for building it. And we're about 20 years behind that up here. We didn't do that, you know, back then where there was no need for us, but you got to build out the transmission so that then you can diversify the generation, because a robust transmission system provides optionality when you when you go to develop generation, you know, an example is if you have 200MW of wind up at Murphy Dome, and Fairbanks can't handle all that wind in the summertime. So they need to have somebody else to contractually purchase it. But if it can't get moved to the central region reliably, people aren't going to sign up for it. And reliable, it means you've got to have two transmission lines, really, because if one goes out of service, most generation projects in the Railbelt are built on what they call it take or pay basis. We don't have markets like they have in the lower 48, where it's a broad, thickly traded market with lots of participants, and you can build something at a certain price and sell into the market and know someone will buy it there just isn't enough load up here to do that. And so without those markets, most generation projects are either constructed by the people who use electricity or constructed by someone else, and they're sold on a take or pay basis. And what that means is I have to pay you for the energy, whether I get it or not, right. So if I only have a single transmission line and it's out of service, I still have to pay you for the output of that plant. But I don't get the electricity. So when you have multiple lines between regions or at least two, then you can have an outage on one line and still continue to take the power from these projects to make that financial package come together, it allows you to construct this diversified generation. Step back, one of the reasons we don't do that well up here is because we don't have a regional outlook. We don't build transmission on a regional basis. It's all been built for this utility for that generator. And that's how the Lower 48 grew up that way, too, if that's how it started. You know, I mean, it all started with people. I have a generator. You have a generator. Let's interconnect these and you can take yours out of service and you can use mine and I'll use yours. It was all very, kind of handshake and homey, homey back in the day until, you know, order 2000 came out and everything got deregulated and there were markets. And then it became much more, I'd say I wouldn't call it professional, but much more structured and organized. So anyway, here, here in the Railbelt, transmission is what's required to first to diversify the fuel supply. I think after that you have to keep all the options on the table.

00:05:03:13 - 00:05:11:13 [Amanda Byrd] Brian Hickey is a general manager of Seward Electric Association, and I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the AVÀÇÂÛ̳ Center for Energy and Power.
Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.