Like the rest of Interior Alaska, Fairbanks, a region of nearly 100,000, is separated from the power grid of the contiguous US and Canada. Electricity is produced locally and regionally from coal- and oil-fired power plants and power outages within this remote microgrid are frequent. In Fairbanks, it's winter more than it isn't and snow is a frequent culprit.

This weekend, the city will celebrate the anniversary of a battery. On August 27, 2003, the Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA), the cooperative that provides power to the Fairbanks area, powered up BESS, aka the Battery Energy Storage System. Larger than a football field and weighing 1,500 tons, BESS exists to ensure continuity of electric service. If the supply of electricity coming in from relatively distant coal plants to the south is interrupted, BESS kicks in until local power plants can be put online.

BESS can hold things down powerwise for all of seven minutes. It functions as what's known as a spinning reserve. It's a bridge between primary and backup power and is generally taken to mean some amount of excess generating capacity that is at any given time pre-synchronized to the grid. If power goes down, switching the spinning reserve on should be seamless.