HOUSE of the MONTH |
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JANUARY-MARCH 2007 |
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| If you know of a house/building/structure that demonstrates the challenges of building in Alaska and would like to share it with us, please send a picture and a short description of the structure and its features to Rich Seifert. | |
This season we're featuring an installation of 2,400 watts of solar photovoltaic collectors at the home of Frank DeLong and family, north of Fairbanks. Frank's son, Tom, is a board member of GVEA and was instrumental in establishing the SNAP program for GVEA. The SNAP program is a unique thing in Alaska but was actually borrowed from a utility district in Washington, the Chelan Public Utility District. The idea of the SNAP program is to encourage people to produce renewable electric power on the grid and sell it to other people who are willing to buy it, voluntarily, at a reasonable return on the investment and production of the power. This works really well for stimulating people to do so because they get paid more than they would if they simply sold the power back to the grid and the utility only paid them the avoided costs for the power. The DeLong family installation is one of the largest on the grid. The systems are limited in the SNAP program to a maximum of 25 kilowatts capacity. Wind and other means of producing power renewably are also qualified to be included in the system. For more information on the SNAP program -- call Golden Valley Electric Association or go to the GVEA website: www.gvea.com |
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