Alaska’s 223-mile second power line won $150 million in Defense Production Act money

Alaska’s Beluga-Healy Transmission Project, a planned 223-mile high-voltage line between Beluga and Healy, has been picked to receive up to $150 million in Defense Production Act funding. The money comes from the U.S. Department of Energy, and it would give the state’s main power corridor a second route between Southcentral and the Interior.

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The Energy Department award and its recipient

The award is a federal share of a larger bill. The Energy Department’s Office of Electricity announced the award and says the Alaska Energy Authority, the state agency running the project, would combine the federal dollars with $268 million in non-federal money, for a planned total of $418 million that the department labels a preliminary planning estimate.

The department’s announcement describes the line as a second high-voltage route between Southcentral and Interior Alaska, linking the state’s most densely populated communities with its major military installations. It says the project would lower electricity costs and strengthen reliability for about 75% of Alaska’s population. Office of Electricity Assistant Secretary Katie Jereza put the case in plain terms: “Alaska’s weather is unforgiving, and its grid needs another way to keep power moving.” She added that Beluga-Healy “will provide that critical second route, helping protect communities from disruptions and meet growing demand.”

The Defense Production Act label matters because of where the authority comes from. An April 2026 presidential determination under section 303 of the act names transmission lines and conductors, substations, and power-control and protection equipment as essential to the national defense, and directs the Energy Secretary to make the purchases, commitments and financial arrangements needed to build up that capacity. The Energy Department says $1 billion in federal money has been appropriated for energy projects deemed critical to national security, and the Alaska line is being funded from that pool of energy projects.

A Railbelt hanging on a single intertie

The Railbelt is the grid that serves the Kenai Peninsula, Anchorage and Fairbanks, and it is the system about 75% of Alaskans depend on for power.

Alaska Beacon reporter James Brooks wrote that the existing intertie, built in the 1980s, mainly ships lower-cost hydropower and natural gas power north to Fairbanks, and that in recent years it has also carried coal-fired power south to Anchorage during natural gas shortages. Most of Alaska’s military bases rely on energy that flows through it. A second line would keep power moving across the Railbelt when that first intertie is upgraded or replaced, a job covered by a separate project, and would let utilities buy the cheapest electricity available even when it sits at the opposite end of the system.

Redundancy is the whole point. When one line carries both the cheap power and the emergency power, a single fault or a planned outage forces the Interior to lean on its own local generation, which is usually the more expensive option. Alaska Energy Authority planners have described the Beluga-to-Healy line in exactly those terms in a May 2024 presentation on modernizing the Railbelt grid, calling it a way to make the existing intertie more resilient and redundant.

The money, the schedule, and when steel might go up

Nobody should picture towers rising next summer. Curtis Thayer, the authority’s executive director, told the Alaska Beacon that the federal money would likely cover engineering, planning and permitting, and that the announcement came as a surprise because he learned only on the Monday that his agency had won. The Beacon reported that construction is not expected until after 2030.

The authority has been planning the intertie for almost five years, and it had not intended to move ahead until other pieces of its upgrade campaign, including links supporting the renovated Bradley Lake hydroelectric project, were online. The remaining $268 million could come from other federal grants, from the state, or from authority loans, and none of that has been committed.

The figures have also shifted over time. The May 2024 presentation described a 250-mile overhead direct-current line costing up to $730 million, with half expected from federal sources and construction in 2027 through 2031. The Energy Department’s current description is about 223 miles and $418 million, so the project in the award is a smaller and later one than the version AEA showed two years ago.

What stays unsettled

The Energy Department’s language is conditional: “up to” $150 million, money it “intends” to deploy. The state’s congressional delegation, Representative Nick Begich and Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, issued statements backing the grant, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright credited Sullivan with arranging an August 2026 Anchorage briefing from the authority. Wright also tied the line to military expansion in Alaska and to mining and resource development.

What remains open is the non-federal match, the permitting path and the final route length, none of which the department’s announcement resolves. Readers tracking the project can follow the department’s grid reliability and security collection for further awards under the same authority.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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