**Title**: Energy in the North - Phil Wight
**Date**: July 29, 2026
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Phil Wight

00:00:00:18 - 00:00:08:02 [Phil Wight] What they did is they electrified the pump stations to more efficiently move ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ North Slope crude oil.

00:00:08:04 - 00:00:13:29 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy and the North, I continue my conversation with Phil Wight a ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ associate professor of History and Arctic Northern Studies. Electric vehicles have become more common in ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ, including the prevalence of EV charging stations along highways. And we heard last week about the history of people moving electric vehicles in ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ. I continued the conversation by asking Phil if there were other electric vehicles

00:00:32:17 - 00:00:33:22 [Phil Wight] In ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ's history. I think it's also really interesting to think about this history, about when have we used electricity to not just move people in trains or automobiles, but we've used electricity to move commodities to rework the landscape. And that history is fascinating. So in Fairbanks, it goes back to the arrival of the ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ Railroad, enabled this new era of industrial mining when we had the Fairbanks Exploration Company or the FE company come to town. And in order to power all the giant dredges that were all around town, these were electric dredges. They built a big coal plant in downtown. The company plant 9.5MW. It was one of the largest power plants in the circumpolar North in the 1920s, when it came online in 1927. And so these dredges were using coal fired electricity from the center of town to basically remove all of this material and find the gold underneath. And that system, the that's the basis of that system, is that it was actually the basis of Golden Valley electric associations distribution lines and GVEA eventually bought that old company plant. That was the first power plant GVEA ever owned. We can also think about the Ace in the Hole. This is the largest land mobile machine, I think, in North America. And this is the giant machine down at Usibelli that they use to extract coal. It is run off of electricity. And again, this is another process where you are using electricity. Ironically coal, coal fired electricity to extract more coal. A third example that we could consider is the Trans-ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ Pipeline System. When TAPS was first built, it used basically these gas turbine big jet engines to move the crude about, a little more than halfway through TAPS’ life, they had a process called strategic reconfiguration, where they came through and they shut down a bunch of the pump stations, and they were really focused on electrification and automation of the pump stations. What they did is they electrified the pump stations to more efficiently move ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ North Slope crude oil. So the first one to be completed was Pump Station nine out in Delta Junction. So ever since 2009, they have used electricity to move north Slope crude. Not just that, around the same time, this was when megawatt scale wind came to the rail belt in the form of Mike craft's ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ Environmental Power. And so it's quite ironic to me that ever since 2009, not only has electricity moved North Slope crude, actually electricity partially fueled by wind power, has moved ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ North Slope crude to market. So all of this to me, testifies to the increasing utilization of electricity over time to move people and things. And this is not just a nice historical story for me. These are Guideposts to the increasingly electrified future that we are experiencing in ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ every day.

00:03:44:01 - 00:03:52:05 [Amanda Byrd] Phil Wight is an associate professor of history and Arctic Northern Studies at ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the ÓÐÁϺÐ×ÓÊÓƵ Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep and follow us on social media.