A project to replace a precarious section of the undersea cable that brings hydropower from Skagway to Haines has been delayed half a year due to supply chain issues, Alaska Power & Telephone operations manager Darren Belisle told the CVN this week.
The new cable was supposed to arrive in August and be installed this fall but delivery was delayed a few months, Belisle said.
“Supply delays resulted in the cable not arriving on the West Coast until next month, pushing installation into late spring/early summer of 2023 due to the fall/winter weather,” Belisle wrote in an October email to the CVN. “The cable schedule is still on for a late spring early summer installation,” he confirmed this week.
The power company in 2019 discovered damage along the northern section of the cable, which connects Skagway and Haines to the Kasidaya Creek hydroelectric plant. The damage, identified by an unmanned submarine, was caused by underwater landslides, which frequently occur in the Taiya River delta.
Since then there has been concern the 17-mile cable could fail. If it were to fail, Haines would need to rely fully on its more-expensive diesel backup.
AP&T has declined to provide details about the replacement project’s cost and whether it could lead to rate increases for customers.
The company expects no outages during the cable replacement process, according to a March press release.