**Title**: Energy in the North - Bill Stamm
**Date**: October, 29 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Bill Stamm


00;00;00;00 - 00;00;06;12 [Bill Stamm] There's 58 communities that we serve, and they're just scattered everywhere from southeast to about the Arctic Circle.

00;00;06;12 - 00;00;20;22 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North, I speak with Bill Stamm, the CEO of Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, the utility serving the most widespread area in Alaska. I started the conversation with Bill by asking him to describe the area covered by AVEC

00;00;20;24 - 00;01;02;11 [Bill Stamm] We have 11,500 meters that we serve, so we're kind of a medium sized cooperative. There's eight hundred cooperatives in the US. We're kind of in the middle range of those. But as far as the breadth of the area that we serve, it is probably the largest. I think I went on Google Maps, made a big circle and it's over 4000mi². There's 58 communities that we serve, and they're just scattered everywhere from southeast to about the Arctic Circle, primarily along the West Coast and larger rivers in Western Alaska, also out on the islands in the Bering Sea and down the coast of Alaska's. We're spread out all over the state.

00;01;02;11 - 00;01;05;21 [Amanda Byrd] So you really cover every region of Alaska.

00;01;05;21 - 00;01;11;27 [Bill Stamm] I would say that's true. Aside from the North Slope and the Aleutian chain, Alaska is a big place.

00;01;11;27 - 00;01;24;25 [Amanda Byrd] Alaska is a really big place. And these are all really islands, microgrids that, except for some cases, are not connected to another community by any kind of transmission. Right

00;01;24;28 - 00;02;03;20 [Bill Stamm] Right. They are all microgrids. We have 46 power plants serving 58 communities. So there are a few communities that are close together less than 20 miles apart, that are connected by distribution lines. It's not really a transmission line by utility standards because of the voltages that are carried. There's usually not any smaller loads that are in between the community. So it really is an inter tie between the two communities, but nothing else connected to the microgrids themselves. There's a power plant that serves one community, possibly two communities. And then there's nothing for tens or hundreds of miles, and there's not really ability to connect to a larger utility grid.

00;02;03;20 - 00;02;10;17 [Amanda Byrd] You have to get the fuel out there. You have to maintain and manage and run those power plants.

00;02;10;19 - 00;03;10;04 [Bill Stamm] Logistics is a nightmare. Minto is probably the is the only community that we have on the road system. That's about three hours north of Fairbanks. It's the roads in good shape. Everything else, we have to either fly or barge in. So that means every time we design a large maintenance or any sort of construction, we have to design it very well. Make sure we order all the parts, purchase all the parts, deliver all the parts in a timely fashion and get people to parts there at the right time in order to make it all come together. So lots of logistics go into it. And if you forget something, there's not a hardware store around the corner to go refill that. Order a larger items that we margin. If you miss a part scheduled for one year, you can make a year. All sorts of things. So there can be tremendous delays any time something's missing. We have linemen, mechanics, welders, construction personnel, control specialists, different types of technicians that are working on different projects throughout the state.

00;03;10;04 - 00;03;18;08 [Amanda Byrd] And then behind all of those people that are in the field. You have a whole office staff and warehouse crew.

00;03;18;08 - 00;03;49;03 [Bill Stamm] Yeah. Our headquarters is in Anchorage. We stock 6000 different line items. We order a lot of other materials that have to be routed through here and repackaged and sent out. We've got about 90 employees, full time employees in all that. Maybe a third of that are traveling techs, and the other two thirds are support folks that are keeping them supplied with materials and coordinating contracts, keeping track billing, all the things that the utility has to do.

00;03;49;06 - 00;04;02;10 [Amanda Byrd] Bill Stamm is the CEO of Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, and I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.