Adverse economic conditions are muddying the future of a plan to put Alaska’s largest solar farm in Nikiski. The company developing the project withdrew its contract from state regulators this week, saying the project investor deemed the project would no longer be economic in its current form.
Jenn Miller is the CEO of Renewable IPP, the company that brought the project proposal to HEA. Her company owns and operates utility-scale solar farms in Alaska, including in Houston and Willow. She says several economic factors since the start of the year compounded to prompt the withdrawal.
“One of those is just uncertainty around the solar investment tax credits, and not that those have changed yet, but there's uncertainty in the market on what the percentages will be in the timeline eligibility timeline,” she said. “And we also experienced, received some construction bids that were, you know, kind of higher than industry benchmark.”
Miller says she can’t give details about how much costs surged, but that the current economics mean the project needs to be “re-imagined and worked through.” Miller says that’s another year’s worth of work that Renewable IPP can’t afford to take on, so pulling the contract made sense.
“We didn't want the commission spending time on a contract that we need to get reworked,” she said. “And so, we call out also in our filing, that, any future iteration of the project that that will file a new contract on its own.”
Miller says they're working with stakeholders to figure out a path forward for the project. Those stakeholders include New York-based Clean Capital LLC – the project’s investor.
“They continue to be committed to the project – they're very interested in it,” she said. “Even though we can't continue to finance further development, we are still committed to working with all the parties to figure out if there's a way forward for this project.”
HEA Spokesperson Keriann Baker said Friday that Miller briefed HEA’s board of directors on the setback last week and that the contract withdrawal “isn’t at all uncommon.” She says the project still aligns with HEA’s goals of diversifying their energy sources to be less dep endent on natural gas.
“We're optimistic we'll get something off the ground,” she said. “Will it look exactly like it was the first time? It's really too soon to tell.”
More information about the Puppy Dog Lake solar project is available on Renewable IPP’s website.
