**Title**: Energy in the North - Bri Gabel
**Date**: May 27, 2026
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Bri Gabel

00;00;00;22 - 00;00;15;02 [Bri Gabel] The challenge with the cruise ship electrification is the cruises that would theoretically be able to plug in or on the like, almost the exact opposite side of town as the Blue Lake and Green Lake generation systems.

00;00;15;02 - 00;00;44;10 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North, I continue my conversation with Bri Gabel, the sustainability coordinator for the City and Borough of Sitka. Last year when I was in Sitka. It was a three cruise ship day and there were people everywhere.
Tourism is one of the main sources of income for Sitka. The City and borough of Sitka is exploring the logistics of electrifying the cruise ship shore power, and I began the conversation by asking Bri what the population change is on a day when the cruise ships are in Port.

00;00;44;10 - 00;03;41;00 [Bri Gabel] So in general, Sitka's population is about 8300 people. We don't have a great idea of how many people might travel outside of Sitka for extended periods during the winter months when it's, you know, extra rainy and gloomy, but on certain days, those those ships can approach the 6000 people mark. So not quite double. In the past, we have had days where it has more than doubled our population. But since the city has an MoU with some of the larger cruise lines, that that hasn't been as much of an issue, especially this last year. But it is a pretty big increase nonetheless. And the challenge with the cruise ship electrification is the cruises that would theoretically be able to plug in or on the like, almost the exact opposite side of town as the Blue Lake and Green Lake generation systems. And while we have more than enough energy to do it, we think kind of based on these these rough estimates, the challenge is getting the power to there. So we have a surplus in generation, but our transmission and distribution is a little bit undersized for moving the power around. And so electrifying the cruise docks would require a pretty substantial investment in our transmission system, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is one of those things that I'm actually working right now with, with the, the National Renewable Energy Labs to kind of try and figure out and a little bit more detail, because the summertime is often when our dam is spilling most
 often. And that's basically energy. That's not being utilized. And so we can better quantify how much electricity we could be generated from that water that we're spilling over the dam. We'll have a better idea of how to kind of support cruise ship electrification and better plan out what infrastructure would be needed to get that power out there and work out anything else that we would have to to make sure that, you know, we're meeting the electricity needs of the community first, with the additional capability of the system going out to those cruise lines.
 Unfortunately, most of our transmission and distribution system needs to be upgraded kind of across the whole, as our community is quite electrified compared to other parts of the state, given that our hydroelectric electricity is much more affordable than power in other parts of the state. So it is something we are we're still kind of in the early stages of thinking about, but the good thing about cruise ships is they kind of can stand in for any large load that could be new housing, that could be another kind of business. It just so happens that these ones are on the very opposite side of town. And so it's a big challenge. But yeah, we're still kind of in that, that phase of really trying to nail down of, of what our capabilities are as far as power generation goes, to understand how many cruise ships we could plug into our system.

00;03;41;00 - 00;03;54;23 [Amanda Byrd] Bri Gabel is a sustainability coordinator for the City and Borough of Sitka. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/ACEP