**Title**: Energy in the North - Travis Million
**Date**: February 26, 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Travis Million



00;11;34;06 - 00;11;38;10 [Travis Million] In electrical terms, the electrons will go to the path of least resistance.

00;11;38;13 - 00;11;44;27 [Amanda Byrd]This week on Energy in the North, I speak with Golden Valley Electric Association president and CEO Travis Million. GVEA is one of five utilities generating and distributing power along the 700 mile Railbelt grid from Homer to ÌÇÐÄvlog¹ÙÍø. The Alaska Center for Energy and Power has produced an annual report on residential solar installations and net metering along the Railbelt, which shows the first grid type solar in 2010
and an installed net metering capacity of 182 kilowatts. And in 2023 that installed capacity grew to around 16,000 kilowatts. I began the conversation with Travis by asking him what exactly is net metering?

00;12;20;02 - 00;12;23;06 [Travis Million] Net metering in very simple terms is a way to measure how much energy the utility provided to the house and how much energy is pushed back onto the utility or used in the member's house with their solar panels. So it's just netting it out instead of a gross energy. It's a net energy on how much energy is come in versus how much has gone out and what that total is or the net of that is. People who have solar panels on their house, any energy that's pushed back to the utility would be subtracted from the energy that was pushed on to the house from the utility, say, when the sun is shining.

00;12;53;26 - 00;12;56;07 [Amanda Byrd] When the solar power comes from the sun hits the panel, the solar will generate power. The power goes into the system. Does my house actually use that power from that solar panel directly

00;13;06;27 - 00;13;11;01 [Travis Million] In electrical terms, the electrons will go to the path of least resistance. So the shortest path possible is where it's going to go. So if your solar panels are on your house, yes, your house physically will be receiving and utilizing those electrons before any other electrons. A prime example is if you had, 100 watts that you were using your house and your solar panel was putting out 80 watts, those 80 watts to go to your house and then you would have to supplement with 20 watts from from the grid as well. So yes.

00;13;34;07 - 00;13;37;12 [Amanda Byrd] f my house is producing, say, 150 kilowatt and we're only using say that 80, then there's like a 70 kilowatt difference. So our neighbors might use our electricity. 

00;13;46;22 - 00;13;48;26 [Travis Million] Yes. So technically would go probably to your neighbor's house because it's the closest path. But we just measure it is it's going back on to the grid and being used wherever needed.

00;13;54;29 - 00;13;56;25 [Amanda Byrd] People can't just go and throw up solar panels on the roof willy nilly, there has to be like some coordination, correct, With the utility?

00;14;02;07 - 00;14;03;20 [Travis Million] You just work through us so that we can ensure that the panels are installed properly to provide the proper safety precautions on the system so that if there was a fault on the system, the solar panels aren't trying to put power back onto the grid that could expose our linemen and others in the field to hazards that shouldn't be there. There are safety reasons why we go through the process of filling out the applications and putting them on. But from the standpoint of limitations is there's different spots within our grid that are, not as strong as other parts. So downtown ÌÇÐÄvlog¹ÙÍø, you're going to have a very strong grid outlying areas. Prime example would be like Delta. That's very far end of a very long radial line is going to be a little bit weaker of a system. And if you have too much
what we'll call non dispatchable resources, solar, wind, things like that, on these weaker parts of the system, it can actually cause stability issues. Prime example is if you had say, a megawatt of load typically in an area and if you had a megawatt of additional solar in that same area and the sun went behind the clouds, all of a sudden you would lose all the generation for that load and you could cause outages in that. So we just have to be careful with how much of these solar systems are within different parts of our system to ensure reliability.

00;15;18;03 - 00;15;32;11 [Amanda Byrd] Travis Million is the president and CEO of Golden Valley Electric Association. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more uaf.edu/acep.