**Title**: Energy in the North - Ron Vinon
**Date**: October, 22 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Ron Vinson

00;00;00;17 - 00;00;06;16 [Ron Vinson] Because it's connected to that shaft, it's also making the generator spin as that generator spinning, producing electricity.

00;00;06;16 - 00;00;20;01 [Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, I join Sitka City and Borough Utility Director Ron Vinson for a tour of the Blue Lake Hydroelectric Power Plant that services the community of around 9000 year round residents. Let's go check it out.

00;00;20;01 - 00;01;07;26 [Ron Vinson] This is Sawmill Creek, so we have specific requirements to keep water flow going because there's a fish habitat here. We've got steelhead. We've got a number of different species that come up here. We have a requirement twice a year, to change the flows. One is around April, we switch from 50 cfs, that we're putting into the river up to about 70 cubic feet per second. So, it's just a volumetric flow, and so that's one of our requirements that we have with, some of our stakeholders, fish and Wildlife, Fish and Game, Forest Service, all those folks. And, I think traditionally this did not pass salmon all the way up. And so, some of this is due to, our fishery that we have out here NSRAA the fishery out here. 

00;01;07;26 - 00;01;09;12 The zombie fish out here. 

00;01;09;12 - 00;01;25;11 [Ron Vinson] Yeah. Yeah, they almost look like koi, right? They do  when they turn different colors. It's kind of interesting. This is our switchyard out here. Everything gets distributed from this power plant, into town from here. If you look in the background there, you see that black pipeline going over that old bridge?

00;01;25;11 - 00;01;25;26 [Amanda Byrd] Yes.

00;01;25;26 - 00;01;49;23 [Ron Vinson] That pipeline goes up top here to this hill, and we'll drive up there, but there's, our penstock comes out of the mountain, and, and that penstock actually feeds, pressurized water to the fishery over here and also to the, industrial yard, but also feeds into our, our water treatment plant, which is that blue building over there, the blue roof. And over there, it gets treated by UV, and or, filter like membrane filtration and then it gets passed in. And that's our primary drinking source, 

00;01;57;15 - 00;02;00;07 [Amanda Byrd] So. So the water gets used twice essentially once for

00;02;00;07 - 00;02;00;24 [Ron Vinson] It could

00;02;00;26 - 00;02;02;15 [Amanda Byrd] energy and once for drinking water.

00;02;02;15 - 00;02;03;07 [Ron Vinson]It could. Yes. Go ahead and let's go inside. 

00;02;05;24 - 00;02;08;06 [Amanda Byrd] say hello. Hey, how's it going? It's going.

00;02;08;06 - 00;03;50;25 [Ron Vinson] We are gonna take a quick tour around. Okay, so we have the penstock coming down from the dam. You get a bunch of pressurized water in there. Water flowing down bifurcates into three different, smaller lines. Each of those lines divert out to each of these units. You have a turbine shut off valve. That's that main valve that's on that unit that's coming in. That turbine shut off valve helps you control, you know, lock out that unit so that it doesn't have any potential energy if we're doing maintenance and things like that on it as the water is going into this spiral case, or scroll case. That water's getting compressed because you can see that channel is getting smaller. And as that happens, it is forcing a, I think of it like a propeller, but, it's called a runner. It's forcing that runner to spin. And as that runner's spinning, and because it's connected to that shaft, it's also making the generator spin as that generator spinning, producing electricity. So, same, same concept, that you would see with like, steam generation up north, where you have a turbine that's compressing and then it's also in turn spinning the generator. So same principle. The yellow component there that you can see what it is if you have an operating ring and that operating ring is attached to a bunch of little gates inside of there. And as we shift that operating ring each one of those gates adjust slightly. And that will help us, either it speeds up or slow down the turbine, which in turn generates more or less energy. So that's how we can kind of, adjust in here to make sure that we are meeting the load in town.

00;03;50;25 - 00;04;02;20 [Amanda Byrd] Ron Vinson is the Sitka City and borough utility director. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.