Generator system backs up 1500-mile submarine fiber optics cable network - Pacific Detroit Diesel Allison

Communications technology such as telephone cable and microwave channels has brought Alaska seconds away from the lower 48. More recently, that's been pared to milliseconds thanks to fiber optic cables that now snake along the North Pacific seafloor from Whittier, Alaska, to the Pacific Northwest.

With service over several cables begun in the spring of 1999, Pacific Detroit-Allison's branch in Anchorage, Alaska, was called on to install a modem and highly automated standby generator plant in the fiber optic transmission station being completed in Whittier by Alaska Northstar Communications, a subsidiary of WCI Cable, Inc.

The facility draws 208 V, three-phase power from the Chugach Electrical Association powerplant in Whittier. But any interruption to the supply will automatically trigger two Kohler model 80ROZJ 100 kVA generator sets that also can be monitored and controlled over telephone lines from Anchorage.

Rated at 120/208 V, three-phase, and 60 Hz, the Kohler equipment incorporates John Deere 6059T four-cycle turbocharged diesel engines with six in-line cylinders. The 5.9 L engines displacement engines deliver 150 hp maximum power at the rated speed of 1800 rpm. The engines utilize a manually operated priming pump and incorporate both primary and secondary fuel filters. The engines were built at Deere's Saran, France, facility and combined with the Kohler generators in the U.S. PDDA represents Kohler in Alaska and the Russian Far East.

The gateway to the village of Whittier is vintage Alaska - an ancient string of railroad flat cars haul autos, trucks and busses through two, long, lightless tunnels and by the massive Portage Glacier from Alaska's Seward Highway to the village that straggles along a bay off Prince William Sound.

Whittier was founded during World War II to receive and dispense fuel. The rusting hulks in an extensive tank farm still stand near the foot of the mountains in Chugach National Park. The most prominent structure in town, however, is an anachronistic and towering apartment building - reported to hold the entire population of the village when winter descends.

However, among first sights when one emerges from the final tunnel are two buildings that represent modern technology - fiber optics cable terminals being completed to service cables that run to Juneau, Valdez, and 2000 miles to Oregon and Washington.