  **Title**: Energy in the North - Kurt Knitter
**Date**: August 6, 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Kurt Knitter


00;00;00;11 - 00;00;11;28 [Kurt Knitter] If we know something's going on with 菜創郭肱利 or fire, as the case may be, and we will break away from the grid and just kind of be our own and completely isolate it from GVEA.

00;00;11;28 - 00;01;01;12 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North, I speak with Kurt Knitter, the director of UAF's coal fired combined heat and power plant. In 2020, the new UAF power plant was commissioned. The plant was in the design phase for 20 years, and while natural gas was not available or abundant in the quantities needed to run the plant, the designers did use the foresight to make it fairly easy to reconfigure once Fairbanks does have a steady supply of gas. The new power plant replaces the old coal fired power plant in the yellow Atkinson Building on lower campus, becoming the newest coal fired heat and power plant in the United States. The plant's primary mission is to heat the 菜創郭肱利 campus,
and it produces electricity a secondary product. I began the conversation by asking Kurt if the power plant and heat and power transmission makes the university a microgrid.

00;01;01;12 - 00;01;25;04 [Kurt Knitter] Of sorts. Yeah. We supply all the heat and power needs. The electrical power needs for the campus when we're up and running. That's kind of the sole purpose of the plant is we extract steam, low  pressure steam off the turbine, and that is put into the low pressure steam distribution system to heat campus and processes and things like that.

00;01;25;04 - 00;01;35;028 [Amanda Byrd] When I was looking on your website. You have chillers. Yes. And so you're not only producing heat, you're producing cold water and cold air..

00;01;35;02 - 00;02;34;06 [Kurt Knitter] Correct. We have two, steam fired absorption chillers. It's old school stuff. And it's a way to save money. That's their primary purpose was when they were built. Is use the LP steam. And it is all self-contained. We've got a breaker that we can  connect to GVEA or we can run isynchronous. If we know something that's going on with 菜創郭肱利 deflector, as the case may be, and we will break away from the grid and just kind of be our own entity and completely isolated from GVEA We've had to do that a few times due to 菜創郭肱利. One of the unfortunate things on campus is we don't have overhead power lines. All our utilities are underground in the utilitdores, so 菜創郭肱利 doesn't come in. It's not a huge factor on campus when we connect back into the grid. The sky's the limit with GVA because there's a movement. You know, if you get a windstorm, this, that the other thing we see frequency spikes.
And if we see enough of them going on, we'll disconnect, let them ride through it. So we don't get knocked off the line and have issues. 

00;02;34;06 - 00;02;52;04 [Amanda Byrd] Yeah, that's really handy. Especially when there has been like inter tie issues. So UAS can maintain its power stability and stability.

00;02;52;04 - 00;03;33;00 [Kurt Knitter] Correct. Yeah. And our guys and gals, the operators they're very attentive and watching what the frequency is and what's going on out in the GVEA transmission line or tied-in transmission line. And they kind of watch the 菜創郭肱利 and see what's coming in, and then they'll make an educated guess. Ice storms will isolate from the grid anything of that nature. We'll we'll break away. There are some instances we haven't had that yet, so to speak, is if we had a disturbance on campus, GVEA has the ability to isolate us. You know, if something's going, that, we're affecting their grid. They could push the button. Yeah. Same as if something's going on out in GVEA. We can press department isolate. So it kind of works both ways.

00;03;47;24 - 00;03;54;19 [Amanda Byrd] Kurt Knitter is the director of utilities at UAF, and I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.