This week on The Alaska Show we sit down with Jenn Miller and Chris Colbert, CEO and CFO, and husband and wife co-founders, of Renewable IPP. Renewable IPP recently expanded its Willow, AK solar pilot project into a full-blown 1.2 MW utility-scale solar farm and went live with delivering energy to Alaskans via Matanuska Electric Association in December of 2019. In this interview we discuss the economics of solar in Alaska, how they got started, getting project financing, and how four partners from the oil industry can move renewable energy forward in Alaska. Alex and JJ discuss postponing The Homer Alaska Podcast Anniversary Part and the Coronavirus. Intro/Postponing Event/Coronavirus (0:51) Interview with Jenn Miller and Chris Colbert (15:38) www.TheAKShow.com IG @alaskashow Facebook.com/TheAlaskaShow Interview Notes Jenn Miller is CEO, Chris Colbert is CFO of Renewable IPP - they are husband and wife. Sam and Grant are the other partners. “Renewable IPP” is a general name they came up with so they can leave their options open for other types of renewables. IPP stands for Independent Power Producer meaning it sells its power to the grid. The 1.2 MW solar farm in Willow, AK went live in December 2019 selling energy to MEA. It’s twice the size of any solar installation in the state. It was a $1.5M undertaking. They went live in December so they could squeeze construction into 2019. They have to do the financing, feasability screen and construction all then. They rushed to get all the DC electric work and panel work one in November. The final interconnection took place early December. It’s a tight window that controlled when they came online. They wanted to move as fast as possible to show they could do it. They completed the 140KW pilot project in Oct/Nov 2018. They wanted to do a full expansion in a year. Also, in 2019 there were federal tax incentives. The incentives step down in 2020. They are confident that economic feasibility will continue to make solar viable as incentives step down. There is no storage with the project - just grid-tie. They want to keep cost per watt low and keep costs to the utility low and keep power low to their members. Alaska is an interesting solar market because in the summer as the state has the most activity there’s plenty of sunshine. Chris says utility-scale renewable energy projects have explode across the US in the last couple of years. In Alaska there’s been a lot of residential solar, but no utility-scale. But if you look at a solar installation map of Alaska and compare it to a country like Germany, Alaska actually has a little more solar resource potential just distributed unevenly throughout the year. Jenn thinks there’s a perception change to get through. Everyone at the beginning assumed they would go to Arizona or Colorado and that it wouldn’t work in Alaska. They had to come in and prove they could do it at a low cost.  The big driver of lower costs in the last few years is solar panel manufacturing has reached a scale where it’s very efficient and the panels are cheap. Wind and solar are the cheapest forms of renewable energy right now. In Alaska you have to be creative to keep costs down because shipping is expensive. Even in the three years they’ve done the home project, pilot, and now this project, Jenn says they’ve seen a 5-10% reduction in solar panel cost already. The federal tax incentive is one of the most successful programs. The Lower 48 created big demand and drove panel prices down and now the economics work in Alaska. Oil investments might have a higher return, but they’re very high-risk, very expensive projects. Renewables are much more predictable, much more financially accessible, and still generate a healthy return. 100% of the power is sold to Matanuska Electric Association. Every electron that is generated off Renewable IPP’s panels go straight onto the grid through a meter. It has to be consumed instantaneously. There’s no valve to turn it on and off regularly,