Alaska AI

The CEO of the Alaska Energy Authority Curtis Thayer told the Anchorage Daily News that a federal filing claiming a tie-in to AEA’s $400 million Cook Inlet PowerLink was “dead wrong.” He says AEA was never contacted.

Thayer is CEO and Executive Director of AEA, the Anchorage-headquartered agency that finances and operates Railbelt grid infrastructure including the PowerLink submarine transmission project serving the Anchorage-area load center.

The trigger was a preliminary permit application at FERC. DeepGreen Cook Inlet SPV LLC proposed a 100-megawatt underwater AI data center off Nikiski, roughly 350 tidal turbines and 66 subsea server “hives,” described in the filing as designed to tie into AEA’s Cook Inlet PowerLink. Per ADN on August 19th Thayer said AEA had never been contacted by the company. “It’s extremely disappointing that they would send something to FERC without contacting us,” he said.

The binary he owned was narrow. Let a claimed partnership with a $400 million public asset sit unchallenged in the federal record or say on the record that it doesn’t exist.

He chose refutation and it was the right call. A federal permitting record is a durable document and an unverified interconnection claim inside it does real work for a developer. It signals to reviewers and to capital that a $400 million state-backed line is already in the plan.

Correcting that early costs AEA almost nothing and it keeps a public asset from supplying free credibility to a developer AEA says it had never spoken with. It also tells the next speculative filer that Railbelt infrastructure isn’t a plug-and-play backdrop for an AI data center pitch.

The tension underneath is unresolved. Alaska’s utilities are courting exactly this class of load and Chugach Electric has said it needs large new loads to spread fixed costs across a shrinking customer base. A 100-megawatt tidal-powered data center is the kind of load that math wants. Thayer’s correction was justified but it landed as a public no rather than an opening to talk. Whether AEA treats this as a one-off record correction or as its standing posture toward data center developers will say a lot about how Alaska competes for this investment.

The window is open now. FERC’s comment and intervention period on Project No. 15423-000 opened September 4th. Watch whether AEA files formal comments or moves to intervene, whether DeepGreen amends or withdraws the PowerLink interconnection claim, and how Kenai Peninsula Borough stakeholders weigh in. Watch too whether this becomes the template for Railbelt responses to North Slope and Mat-Su proposals.

Was public refutation the whole answer here or does AEA now owe developers a published front door for interconnection questions before the next filing lands?

#AlaskaAI #EnergyPolicy #GridPolicy #DataCenters

1 day ago | [YT] | 1

Alaska AI

The CEO of the Alaska Energy Authority Curtis Thayer told the Anchorage Daily News that a federal filing claiming a tie-in to AEA’s $400 million Cook Inlet PowerLink was “dead wrong.” He says AEA was never contacted.

Thayer is CEO and Executive Director of AEA, the Anchorage-headquartered agency that finances and operates Railbelt grid infrastructure including the PowerLink submarine transmission project serving the Anchorage-area load center.

The trigger was a preliminary permit application at FERC. DeepGreen Cook Inlet SPV LLC proposed a 100-megawatt underwater AI data center off Nikiski, roughly 350 tidal turbines and 66 subsea server “hives,” described in the filing as designed to tie into AEA’s Cook Inlet PowerLink. Per ADN on August 19th Thayer said AEA had never been contacted by the company. “It’s extremely disappointing that they would send something to FERC without contacting us,” he said.

The binary he owned was narrow. Let a claimed partnership with a $400 million public asset sit unchallenged in the federal record or say on the record that it doesn’t exist.

He chose refutation and it was the right call. A federal permitting record is a durable document and an unverified interconnection claim inside it does real work for a developer. It signals to reviewers and to capital that a $400 million state-backed line is already in the plan.

Correcting that early costs AEA almost nothing and it keeps a public asset from supplying free credibility to a developer AEA says it had never spoken with. It also tells the next speculative filer that Railbelt infrastructure isn’t a plug-and-play backdrop for an AI data center pitch.

The tension underneath is unresolved. Alaska’s utilities are courting exactly this class of load and Chugach Electric has said it needs large new loads to spread fixed costs across a shrinking customer base. A 100-megawatt tidal-powered data center is the kind of load that math wants. Thayer’s correction was justified but it landed as a public no rather than an opening to talk. Whether AEA treats this as a one-off record correction or as its standing posture toward data center developers will say a lot about how Alaska competes for this investment.

The window is open now. FERC’s comment and intervention period on Project No. 15423-000 opened September 4th. Watch whether AEA files formal comments or moves to intervene, whether DeepGreen amends or withdraws the PowerLink interconnection claim, and how Kenai Peninsula Borough stakeholders weigh in. Watch too whether this becomes the template for Railbelt responses to North Slope and Mat-Su proposals.

Was public refutation the whole answer here or does AEA now owe developers a published front door for interconnection questions before the next filing lands?

#AlaskaAI #EnergyPolicy #GridPolicy #DataCenters

1 day ago | [YT] | 0

Alaska AI

BLM opened the federal right-of-way renewal docket for the Trans Alaska Pipeline on Aug. 26th and scoping closes Sept. 10. Federal law already settled the renewal. The only live decision is the terms.

Under 30 U.S.C. 185 the government must renew the TAPS corridor grant so long as the pipeline keeps operating. One BLM office is writing thirty years of corridor conditions on a fifteen-day window.

- The renewal floor 30 U.S.C. 185(n) caps the grant at thirty years and removes any discretion to refuse while the line operates, held by the Secretary of the Interior.
- The conditioning power, 185(f), lets that same authority prescribe terms over extent, duration, location, construction, operation, maintenance, use and termination, with no limiting standard.
- The renewal docket NEPA Number DOI-BLM-AK-9410-2026-0009-EA runs scoping and drafts the stipulations package controlled by BLM Alaska State Director Kevin Pendergast.
- The grantee stack Alyeska Pipeline Service Company applying for owners Harvest Alaska, ConocoPhillips Transportation Alaska and ExxonMobil Pipeline Company.
- The parallel state gate, an amendment to lease ADL 63574 under AS 38.35.070, adds about 26.1 acres of stockpile ground at mileposts 77.5 through 82.4, decided by State Pipeline Coordinator Anthony Strupulis.

Control sits in the NEPA instrument and Pendergast owns the binary. Build the thirty-year record on the posted path, an environmental assessment carried in the -EA suffix of BLM’s NEPA number reported by Alaska Public Media as a lighter review than an EIS, or elevate it to one. No committee vote, no rate case, no legislative concurrence.

A thirty-year land-use rulebook gets written while looking like a routine permit. Congress guaranteed the renewal in 185(n) and left every term unguarded in 185(f). A thinner record supports a thinner stipulations package, one easier to issue and harder to contest for thirty years. The previous renewal was built on an environmental impact statement which is why the instrument choice is the story.

What conditions attach to corridor use is the quiet question. It fixes access terms for a generation on the only continuous North Slope to tidewater route the state has, the default path for anything else that ever needs to move between the two. Almost nobody is at the table.

A scoping comment on the docket by Sept. 10 is the cheapest move available, the only step that builds a record before the stipulations exist. After that you’re arguing against a draft, not shaping one. Objections at ADL 63574 close 5 p.m. Sept. 21. Alyeska and its three owners are positioned in both forums. Dalton Highway and North Slope developers needing access roads, gravel, water or crossings are in neither unless they file this week.

Should one state director pick the NEPA instrument that fixes corridor terms for thirty years or does a grant this consequential warrant an EIS by default?

#AlaskaAI #EnergyPolicy #OilAndGas #ArcticInnovation

1 day ago | [YT] | 1

Alaska AI

Sydney Scout co-sponsored an ordinance that would bar Anchorage police from adding AI "human-feature" recognition to the Real-Time Crime Center without Assembly approval. Public hearing is September 1st.

Scout represents District 1, North Anchorage, on the Anchorage Assembly, with a term running to 2029.

The ordinance is AO 2026-108 and was introduced and referred on August 4th. According to ADN it would write existing surveillance limits into municipal code and add new ones covering license plate readers, crime center operations, and live camera monitoring. As Alaska Public Media reported, APD couldn't add AI with human-feature recognition capabilities to the network without Assembly approval, subject to temporary authorization and annual reporting.

It would also require a case number for every surveillance-data search, erase individual data after two weeks unless it’s evidence in an active investigation, and bar sharing footage with federal or out-of-state agencies including DHS without a warrant. The binary Scout owns is whether the Assembly decides when algorithmic recognition goes live or APD does.

ADN puts the network’s capacity at up to roughly 750 camera feeds. Alaska’s News Source reported on August 28th that about 238 are currently registered through Axon alongside traffic cameras, drones, and plate readers.

APD says it doesn’t run facial recognition today as the Assembly banned it in 2023. That last fact cuts both ways. Skeptics can fairly argue the 2023 ban already covers the core worry and that AO 2026-108 mostly adds approval friction plus a two-week retention cap that could complicate live investigations. The read here is that the sequencing is still right. A vendor-neutral approval gate is durable in a way a single procurement fight isn’t because it governs whatever tool APD buys next, not just the one on the table now. Scout told ADN, “We need to increase trust before we increase the power of this surveillance system.” The fair criticism is timing. The ordinance rides alongside a pending RTCC expansion of roughly $600,000, AM 524-2026, which makes it easy to read as a guardrail bolted onto one contract rather than standing AI policy.

September 1st settles part of that. Watch whether the AI-approval provision and the two-week retention default survive amendment and whether the guardrails get voted before or after the hardware money heading into the 2027 budget cycle.

Should prior Assembly approval for human-feature recognition live in municipal code or does that put a legislative body in the middle of an operational call it isn’t equipped to make?

#AlaskaAI #AIPolicy #ProcurementReform #ArcticInnovation

1 week ago | [YT] | 0

Alaska AI

Anchorage’s data center ordinance hands the binding siting call to an electric cooperative, not to City Hall. The gate surfaced this week in Fairbanks where the Alaska Municipal League took up data centers.

AO 2026-27 made data centers a conditional use in industrial districts only, then made a written system capacity statement from the serving electrical utility a mandatory part of the application.
Here's how it works:

- Use classification makes data centers conditional in the I-1, I-2 and I-3 industrial districts and no residential district, Anchorage Assembly, adopted 27 March 2026, 10-2.
- Threshold captures facilities needing 20 megawatts or more at peak and splits small from large at 2,000 servers, Planning Director, who waives the 200-foot residential setback only for small ones.
- Electrical statement proves sufficient system capacity at peak before the application is complete, the serving utility, Chugach Electric Association in the Anchorage Bowl.
- Adjudication grants or denies the permit, Planning and Zoning Commission, nine mayoral appointees, five yes votes required no matter how many are seated.
- Water appropriation permits significant water draws with public notice above 5,000 gpd, ADNR.

Control sits on the third layer. The capacity statement is a mandatory application component not a criterion weighed at the hearing. No statement, no complete application, no hearing. Chugach is the largest member-owned electric cooperative in Alaska not a municipal department, and no municipal body can override it. Golden Valley Electric Association COO Nathan Minnema per Alaska’s News Source on August 27th put it plainly. “The larger it gets, the more detailed the analysis gets.” “That would determine if we have the ability to serve it or not.”

The code gives that determination no rebuttal path and that isn’t an oversight. The drafters knew how to write one. In the as-introduced text, an adverse wastewater statement creates a presumption beatable only by clear and convincing evidence. The electrical statement gets nothing. Anchorage turned a private interconnection study into a precondition for public land use approval. The gate went up before the applicants arrived and building it early is defensible. It also set the terms with no counterparty in the room.

The ordinance writes its own escape. Every utility statement requirement is conditioned on connecting to the grid, public water, or public sewer. Behind the meter generation with closed loop cooling triggers none of them. Anchorage priced grid connected compute and left off grid compute comparatively unpriced. Mat-Su Borough has no data center rule, FNSB’s comprehensive plan is in draft, and the AML conference just positioned Anchorage as the statewide template. The copying window is open now.

Should a withheld electrical capacity statement carry a rebuttal path given Anchorage wrote one for wastewater and none for power?

#AlaskaAI #DataCenters #GridPolicy #EnergyPolicy #AIPolicy

1 week ago | [YT] | 0

Alaska AI

DeepGreen's filing names a Universal Docking Cradle. FERC's June letter said much of the underwater hardware lacked dimensions.

The Federal Register holds zero DeepGreen documents and seven for Cook Inlet hydrokinetic. FERC says comment comes after staff find a file complete.

This month Eastport, Maine voted unanimously for a 180 day moratorium on the same company's proposed underwater AI data center. It had already dropped from 51 megawatts to a maximum of 15.

February's filing asked for 1,650 acres of Cook Inlet seabed and up to four years of priority to study it. Its parent Delaware LLC had formed in January.

Our research sets 1,650 acres against Maine's 400, the empty Federal Register row, and Curtis Thayer of the Alaska Energy Authority saying nobody called.

When the comment window opens on Cook Inlet, what would you want measured first?

#CookInlet #FERC #SubseaDataCenters

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Alaska AI

A Delaware LLC formed in January has filed to bank a stretch of Cook Inlet seabed off Nikiski for an underwater AI data center. No Alaska party is legally able to object to it yet.

DeepGreen Cook Inlet SPV LLC proposed a 100-megawatt tidal data center with up to 350 underwater turbines and 66 “hives” housing AI servers per Anchorage Daily News. ADN describes only an application “to conduct preliminary environmental and engineering studies.” Read against 16 U.S.C. 798, that filing is a preliminary permit.

It authorizes no construction and no entry onto waters owned by others. Its only legal effect is to freeze first-in-time priority to file a license application over a defined corridor, four years, extendable four more.

Five layers, in order.

- Corridor claim, 18 CFR 4.81 fixes the description, study plan and boundary maps, filed by the applicant.
- Acceptance gate, 18 CFR 4.32(e) judges whether the filing conforms, controlled by the Director, FERC Office of Energy Projects.
- The asset, priority in time and nothing else, set by Congress at 16 U.S.C. 798.
- Public notice, which opens the intervention and competing-application window, issued by FERC Secretary Kimberly D. Bose.
- Contested or uncontested fork, 18 CFR 375.308 delegated final action, back to that same Director.

Layer 2 is the chokepoint. FERC’s Northwest Branch sent DeepGreen a deficiency letter on June 18th. The cure window is capped at 45 days and a failed cure means any resubmission carries a new filing date, sending the priority claim to the back of the queue. Conformance preserves the original date and triggers the notice. FERC spokesperson Celeste Miller told ADN the application is still under review. The call is live. Not a hearing, not a vote. A letter.

This is site-banking, not power development. A 100 MW behind-the-meter buyer would solve the offtake problem that has killed every prior Cook Inlet tidal proposal which is why the corridor is worth optioning. The cost to Alaska is standing. AEA whose CEO Curtis Thayer told ADN the authority had never heard of DeepGreen, plus Homer Electric at Bernice Lake, the Kenai Peninsula Borough and area tribes, can’t intervene or file a competing application until FERC accepts.

FERC noticed a permit in this same corridor before to Littoral Power Systems at P-15317-000, prescribing 60 days from issuance. Last week’s Bradley Lake anatomy shared that delegation rule but that was an amendment to an existing license decided on the merits. Here the gate decides a filing date before anyone can be heard.

Draft the intervention now and set an eLibrary alert on Cook Inlet hydrokinetic filings. The clock runs from notice issuance, not from discovery.

Should Alaska utilities and boroughs file defensive preliminary permits on corridors they’ll need instead of contesting someone else’s claim after that letter goes out?

#AlaskaAI #EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #GridPolicy

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Alaska AI

Anchorage Assembly member Keith McCormick led the objection that held up APD’s roughly $600,000 Real-Time Crime Center upgrade on August 4h. The binding vote lands August 18th.

McCormick represents Eagle River and Chugiak on the Assembly and the APD system he stalled runs across the whole Anchorage bowl. We covered the award side of this contract on August 7th. The Assembly side is the harder half.

According to Alaska’s News Source which reported the meeting on August 5th, members declined to approve APD’s three-year contract with Thundercat Technology Inc. and postponed action to the August 18th meeting. That outlet is the only one carrying the August 4th debate in detail which is worth stating before the analysis rests on it. The Real-Time Crime Center ingests up to 750 camera feeds plus drones, license-plate readers, and object-recognition analytics.

McCormick’s objection per that account wasn’t about the cameras. “All the guardrails that you just stated are policy and when my constituents ask, ‘what are we collecting? Who can see it? How long do we keep it?’ Anchorage code can’t answer any of those questions,” he said. The binary he owned was clean. Fund the upgrade now or withhold until Anchorage Municipal Code sets binding collection, access, and retention rules.

Withholding the money was the right call. What Anchorage is buying isn't an AI model. It's the camera, ALPR, drone, and analytics infrastructure that surveillance AI runs on which is the layer Alaska’s AI oversight conversation keeps skipping. Anchorage barred facial recognition in 2023 so the municipality has proven it can legislate here. On this record it has no binding code governing the object-recognition analytics the Thundercat upgrade would expand. Policy written inside the executive branch can be rewritten inside the executive branch which is McCormick’s second point. “We have no legislative guardrails. This is an entirely bundling power under the executive branch without any check or balance.”

The counter-case is still worthy. APD frames this as routine public-safety modernization and a member who trusts the 2023 ban plus the chief’s committee-notification commitments could reasonably approve on August 18th and pursue code separately.

Watch one thing on August 18th. Either McCormick converts the objection into a code-level data-governance amendment on collection, access, and retention as a condition of approval, or the Assembly approves the Thundercat contract as written and leaves governance to executive policy. His no vote on the March 2026 data-center zoning ordinance AO 2026-27 suggests he keeps pressing the guardrails-before-infrastructure line.

If you held that seat on August 18th, would you condition the Thundercat contract on binding retention and access rules in code or approve it and legislate the guardrails afterward?

#AlaskaAI #AIPolicy #ProcurementReform

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Alaska AI

Alaska DNR is weighing whether to convey roughly 19,950 acres near Houston to AIDEA under a statute titled “Public and charitable use.” AIDEA’s deputy director says there’s no tenant.

Deputy Director Brandon Brefczynski wrote in the Anchorage Daily News on 4 August, “There is no committed data center tenant, industrial developer, site plan, power source, cooling system, water supply plan or construction schedule.”

One commissioner’s written finding turns sovereign state land into a noncompetitive fee conveyance to a development authority. Three layers do the work.

- Statutory disposal authority and the reversion waiver. AS 38.05.810 allows noncompetitive disposal for “public and charitable use,” limits eligible projects to uses that are “not commercial development,” and requires a reversionary interest the DNR commissioner may waive by written determination.
- Preliminary decision and appeal standing. DNR’s Division of Mining, Land and Water runs ADL 234762, and per the notice only timely written commenters may appeal. Absent significant change the preliminary decision issues as the Final Finding and Decision.
- Grantee as developer, lessor and bond issuer. Under AS 44.88.080, AIDEA may “lease to others a project ... upon the terms and conditions the authority may consider advisable” and “issue bonds and otherwise ... incur indebtedness.”

The chokepoint is layer one, not the calendar. The August 19th comment deadline is the actionable date but no single actor owns a binary there. The commissioner owns two.

Whether conveying 19,950 acres to a bonding development authority for an industrial park is a “public and charitable use.” Also whether the reversion survives. The statute assigns both to “the commissioner,” singular. No board, no vote, no scored evaluation, no competitive bid. The reversion is the only device tying that land to the restricted use and the same officer can delete it.

Land banking ahead of demand is a legitimate strategy. The question is which statute does that work because by AIDEA’s own account the charitable use finding can't rest on any specific project and a waivable reversion means the restriction may not outlive the conveyance. The AI story here isn’t a data center. It’s sovereign land pre-positioned into a financing vehicle ahead of demand, on a discretion with no competitive test.

For any utility, borough, tribe, landowner, developer or capital allocator with an interest in Mat-Su industrial siting or Railbelt load, a written comment is the entire cost of preserving appeal rights. After that the Final Finding and Decision can issue on the preliminary terms. Ask whether the reversionary interest is retained.

Should one signature be enough to both declare an industrial land bank a public and charitable use and waive the reversion that enforces it?

#AlaskaAI #DataCenters #AIPolicy #ProcurementReform

1 month ago | [YT] | 0

Alaska AI

Billy Wailand committed GCI to Starlink bonded gateways on June 11th as outage backup for the fiber and microwave serving Bethel, Sitka, Kotzebue and Dillingham. He owned a build-or-buy call and chose buy.

Wailand is senior vice president of corporate development at GCI, Alaska’s largest telecom and data-transport operator headquartered in Anchorage.

Per GCI’s newsroom the company will use Starlink’s dedicated service with bonded gateways so that when terrestrial systems in those four hubs fail, business and residential traffic rides low-Earth orbit instead. Unalaska and Nome are already live on earlier deployments.

Telecompetitor’s Ian Doescher reported the commitment independently the same day. The GCI release is the subject’s own organization talking, so the resiliency framing is a claim rather than an established finding. No dollar figure was disclosed.

The binary was simple. Buy outage recovery from SpaceX’s LEO gateways, or build more GCI-owned terrestrial or GEO redundancy to the same four hubs.

The call is defensible and low-regret on the merits. Bonded gateways buy multi-gigabit outage recovery for exactly the hubs where GCI-owned redundancy is slowest and costliest to build and GCI framed the arrangement as complementary to fiber and microwave rather than a replacement. Wailand framed the rationale plainly in Telecompetitor’s reporting. “We have long said it takes every tool in our toolkit to serve a state like Alaska.”

The honest tension is dependency concentration. Each incremental commitment of critical middle-mile resiliency to one vendor narrows GCI’s bargaining position with SpaceX in the next round and raises data-sovereignty questions for the health, education and public-safety traffic riding that path. Telecompetitor also notes that Alaska still lags FCC broadband benchmarks and that Starlink median speeds there underperform the Lower 48, which is reason to scrutinize the resiliency claim rather than take it as given.

That no price term or duration has been disclosed is worth flagging. Four hub communities now lean on commercial terms nobody outside the two companies can see.

The AI nexus here sits at the edge. No AI model, no compute siting, no power deal. This is the middle-mile transport the AI era runs on and rural Alaska’s access to anything served from outside the state crosses it.

The next decision Wailand and GCI own is whether bonded-gateway backup extends past these four hubs and on what commercial terms with SpaceX. Watch for a disclosed dollar figure, the duration of the arrangement, and any middle-mile tariff or RDOF or BEAD filing showing how much of rural Alaska’s transport resiliency routes through a single LEO provider.

Should a carrier’s outage-recovery terms with a single satellite provider stay commercially private or does middle-mile redundancy for four hub communities warrant a public filing?

#AlaskaAI #BroadbandAlaska #ArcticInnovation #RuralHealth

1 month ago | [YT] | 0