Minnesota to ask: What is the value of solar power?

Posted on 06/10/2013 by Dan Haugen

(Photo by Melanie Cook via Creative Commons)

Correction appended.

Utility customers who own solar panels are doing society a favor, helping to cut carbon emissions and ease transmission line congestion, among other benefits.

Or, they’re power-grid freeloaders, lowering their own electric bills but sticking everyone else with a bigger share of costs for infrastructure they still depend on after dark.

These two competing views of solar power have led to rising tensions in recent years over policies for connecting customer-owned solar arrays to the grid.

Minnesota’s new solar law could help shed some light on that debate.

As part of a broader solar energy bill signed last month by Gov. Mark Dayton, the Gopher State will soon give utilities an alternative to paying customers the retail electricity rate for their unused solar power. Instead, utilities will be able to pay a different rate based on the “value of solar” to their system, including cost-savings to other ratepayers and broader environmental benefits.

The state’s energy office will come up with guidelines for utilities that want to calculate a value-of-solar tariff, and the utilities’ studies will need to be approved by utility regulators. →

With more solar on the way, does Xcel need more gas peakers?

Posted on 06/06/2013 by Dan Haugen

(Photo by Kate Ausburn via Creative Commons)

As the population grows, the economy improves and the climate warms in its service territory, Xcel Energy projects rising demand for electricity on hot summer days before the end of the decade.

On April 15, the Minnesota utility proposed meeting that new peak demand by building three 215-megawatt natural gas power plants — one in the Twin Cities and another two in North Dakota.

Six weeks later, though, Xcel and other investor-owned utilities in Minnesota were presented with a new legislative mandate to generate 1.5 percent of their electricity from solar by 2020.

The state’s new solar standard is expected to spur development of an estimated 450 megawatts of solar power over the next six and a half years, which raises the question: does Xcel still need all three of those gas peaking plants? →

Can a Minnesota company make the case for wind-to-hydrogen?

Posted on 06/03/2013 by Dan Haugen

A wind-to-hydrogen demonstration project in Scotland. (Photo by James Morrison via Creative Commons)

For all the theoretical promise of pairing wind energy with hydrogen production, no U.S. project has ever made it to full commercial scale.

In Minnesota, that may be about to change.

Hydrogen has long been studied as a potential solution to wind’s timing problem, which is that wind generation tends to be highest at night when demand for electricity is low.

Through electrolysis, in which electricity is used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, surplus wind power at night could be converted to hydrogen, which could then be used in a fuel cell to generate electricity the next day during peak demand.

A handful of pilot projects have demonstrated the technology works, but no one in this country has succeeded in making it economically viable.

A Minnesota project developer believes it may have the answer: Supplementing hydrogen energy storage with sales of “carbon-free” hydrogen for industrial uses. →

Minnesota plants seeds for community solar gardens

Posted on 05/29/2013 by Dan Haugen

(Photo by Toshihiro Oimatsu via Creative Commons)

Scott Cramer has sold offbeat, left-leaning T-shirts, political buttons and bumper stickers through his Northern Sun Merchandising company in Minneapolis for more than 30 years.

These days, one of his more popular slogans has an energy theme. “It says: Whenever there is a huge spill of solar energy, it’s just called a nice day.”

Which is why Cramer is more than happy to lease his 5,000-square-foot rooftop for what will soon be one of Minnesota’s first shared, community-owned solar installations.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed a bill last week that requires the state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy, to establish a community solar gardens program early next year.

The idea is to let customers who can’t or don’t want to install solar panels on their own rooftop instead buy individual panels in a nearby solar development. The electricity generated by a customer’s panels is credited to their utility bill as if they were installed on their home or business. →

Minnesota’s new solar law: Looking beyond percentages

Posted on 05/24/2013 by Dan Haugen

Solar panels at the Audubon Center of the North Woods near Sandstone, Minnesota. (Photo by CERTs via Creative Commons)

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton on Thursday signed into law an energy bill that’s projected to give the state a more than thirtyfold increase in solar generation by the end of the decade.

The Solar Energy Jobs Act was rolled into a larger, omnibus economic development bill and approved by the state’s legislature last week.

The section that’s drawn the most attention is a 1.5 percent by 2020 solar electricity standard for large utilities that is on top of the state’s existing 25 percent by 2025 renewable mandate.

But the bill has several other components that could rival the solar standard’s impact, from expanded incentives and net-metering reforms to the creation of shared, community “solar gardens.” →

Can state harvesting guidelines keep biomass sustainable?

Posted on 05/21/2013 by Dan Haugen

A forest in north-central Minnesota. (Photo by Faruk Ates via Creative Commons)

As a Midwest biomass group promotes a goal of drawing 10 percent of the region’s heating energy from wood fuels by 2025, more questions are sure to arise about whether that amount of fuel could be harvested sustainably.

Heating the Midwest, which announced the goal at its conference last month, estimates that the region has more than enough logging and agricultural residue to supply a tenth of its heating energy by the middle of the next decade.

Making sure that those feedstocks are collected in a way that doesn’t damage the environment will require a review and updating of state harvesting standards, the group says in its 2025 vision document.

Getting the rules right could mean the difference between developing a fuel source that helps address climate change and air pollution challenges versus one that ultimately does more harm than good. →

Are utilities moving quickly enough to cut carbon emissions?

Posted on 05/17/2013 by Dan Haugen

The smokestack at the #4 unit of the Boswell Energy Center near Cohasset, Minnesota is seen in this 2006 photo. (Photo by Than Tibbetts via Creative Commons)

The smokestack at the #4 unit of the Boswell Energy Center near Grand Rapids, Minnesota is seen in this December 2006 photo. (Photo by Than Tibbetts via Creative Commons)

In January, northern Minnesota electric utility Minnesota Power announced a new direction forward for its generation portfolio.

The company’s “Energy Forward” plan calls for adding wind and hydropower, retiring one coal-burning unit, and converting two others to natural gas. Along with continued conservation efforts, the investments are projected to lower the utility’s carbon emissions 30 percent by 2015 compared to 2005 levels.

It’s the years beyond that, however, that worry climate activists.

That’s because Minnesota Power has also proposed investing more than $350 million on an air-quality project at the utility’s largest generator, a 585-megawatt coal-fired unit near Grand Rapids, Minnesota, known as Boswell 4.

The project, which has the support of the Minnesota Department of Commerce, would bring dramatic reductions in particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and mercury emissions, which would mean less haze over the region’s scenic lakes and forests and a lower risk to residents for respiratory and neurological health problems.

But it could also financially commit the company to burning coal for another two decades, during which the unit could spew more than 6 million tons of greenhouse gases at a time when scientists warn major reductions are needed to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change. →

Last gasp for controversial Minnesota wind farm?

Posted on 04/25/2013 by Minnesota Watchdog

A billboard opposing the Goodhue Wind project in Minnesota. (Photo via Minnesota Watchdog)

Cross-posted from Minnesota Watchdog

By Tom Steward

A letter from the owner of a proposed southeast Minnesota wind farm to regulators shows his frustration in the permitting process and a willingness to sell off assets of his investment.

“New Era has no confidence that due process for this project will ever end, nor that an ABPP (Avian and Bat Protection Plan) will ever be approved, however comprehensively and carefully drafted,” said Peter Mastic, owner of New Era Wind Farm, in an April 17 letter to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.

“A lot of the people that have been fighting this think it’s too good to be true,” said Kristi Rosenquist of the Coalition for Sensible Siting. “They want to see the official death certificate from the Public Utilities Commission before they’ll believe it’s really dead. People have called this the Lazarus Project because every time we thought it was dead in the past, it came back to life.” →

Do LED bulbs make turkeys happy? Minnesota farmer smiling either way

Posted on 04/17/2013 by Dan Haugen

LED bulbs contrast with the orange glow from older lights in Greg Langmo's turkey barn in (Photo courtesy Minnesota

LED bulbs contrast with the orange glow from older lights in a Minnesota turkey barn. (Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Project)

At precisely 6 a.m. each morning, Mike Langmo’s turkeys experience a perfect sunrise, regardless of the season or weather.

The Central Minnesota turkey farmer installed dimmable, programmable LED lamps last year in one of his two finishing barns, allowing him to simulate natural light patterns indoors.

There’s some evidence that dimming schedules like these can help better regulate the birds’ circadian rhythms, possibly resulting in healthier, more productive flocks.

While “the jury is still out” on some of those claims, says Langmo, he’s already convinced of another benefit of LED lights: cost savings.

“Energy is an out-of-pocket expense for me,” says Langmo, of Lakewood Turkey Farm in Eden Valley, Minnesota.

The LED lamps are 87 percent more efficient than the 100-watt incandescents that used to line the barn’s ceiling. Even after increasing the number of lights, the barn is still using less electricity. →

Minnesota foundation turns climate focus back to Midwest

Posted on 04/08/2013 by Ken Paulman

A Minneapolis-based family foundation that has pledged $100 million to fight climate change worldwide announced today that it will focus its efforts closer to home.

The McKnight Foundation’s new Midwest Climate and Energy program will launch with $25 million in grants — $5 million to RE-AMP, the network of nonprofits that also publishes Midwest Energy News, and $20 million to the Energy Foundation.

“Over the past five years, McKnight has invested over $60 million globally which has yielded major advances in carbon reduction and helped draw other funding into key areas around the world,” said McKnight president Kate Wolford in a news release. “Now building on the Foundation’s history as a place-based funder, we will concentrate attention and funding in the Midwest.” →

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