The PSC recently approved a plan for the two utilities to recoup $13.8 million in development costs with slight increases in customers’ electric bills. The utilities calculated the sum as the share North Dakota customers should pay for the Big Stone II project.
The plan says an average North Dakota residential electric customer of Otter Tail will pay about 62 cents extra each month for three years. A typical MDU customer will pay $1.51.
Otter Tail, based in Fergus Falls, Minn., and Bismarck-based MDU were part of a group of utilities that proposed building Big Stone II next to an existing power plant near Milbank, S.D.
The project, which was five years in the making, was abandoned last November. Its supporters cited uncertain financing, weaker demand for electricity and uncertainty about federal regulation of coal-fired power plants as reasons for its demise.No comment required; the story speaks for itself.
Oh, I can't resist. The big story here is how inexpensive coal energy is -- the plant, on average, cost each ND consumer less than $1.51/month for three years.
I guess the "weaker demand for electricity" means electric vehicles don't figure into Minnesota's future. Or larger television screens. Or more computers. Or more Fortune 500 companies. For some, the phrase "weaker demand for electricity" equates with "slower growth."
August 17, 2010: MDU asks for 13 percent rate increase in Montana to cover costs of wind energy.
August 16, 2010: The story keeps getting better. I hope the Minnesota folks don't mind higher utility bill; it looks like Xcel will be asking for a rate increase. Xcel recently announced they will be shutting down/retrofitting a coal-powered utility plant to comply with Colorado's greenhouse gas emissions laws. Wanna bet Big Stone II is eventually opened up for Minnesota customers. I can't make this stuff up.
August 1, 2010: This is priceless. One of Minnesota's largest utilty, Xcel, has a "Saver Switch" power management system which allows it to remotely control residential use of electricity. For the first time in three years Xcel had to "flip" that switch due to heavy electrical demand on their system because of the heat wave and the heavy use of residential air conditioners. And just a few days ago, Minnesota reports that there is "weaker demand for electricity." Remember all the flower children of the '60s in Berkeley? They now run the show when it comes to making strategic decisions in certain states.
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UPDATE
August 17, 2010: MDU asks for 13 percent rate increase in Montana to cover costs of wind energy.
August 16, 2010: The story keeps getting better. I hope the Minnesota folks don't mind higher utility bill; it looks like Xcel will be asking for a rate increase. Xcel recently announced they will be shutting down/retrofitting a coal-powered utility plant to comply with Colorado's greenhouse gas emissions laws. Wanna bet Big Stone II is eventually opened up for Minnesota customers. I can't make this stuff up.
August 1, 2010: This is priceless. One of Minnesota's largest utilty, Xcel, has a "Saver Switch" power management system which allows it to remotely control residential use of electricity. For the first time in three years Xcel had to "flip" that switch due to heavy electrical demand on their system because of the heat wave and the heavy use of residential air conditioners. And just a few days ago, Minnesota reports that there is "weaker demand for electricity." Remember all the flower children of the '60s in Berkeley? They now run the show when it comes to making strategic decisions in certain states.
Speaking of Minnesota, a week ago on a very hot Monday Xcel energy activated the central AC energy switches for the first time in three years. If you have central AC you can opt for a 15% summer electricity discount if you get the switch. I was thinking of getting central AC for this even though I am fine with two window units just for the discount. The problem is, if I got the central AC I would get a girlfirend who would want to crank it up all the time.
ReplyDeleteI retired almost three years ago but I used to get work emails on how building backup generators would be used during hot spells. This is very expensive! We had the "crash" a year later with a large decline in electrical use, mostly commercial and industrial. If the economy picks up again, there will be a shortage of electricity. I followed Big Stone. Basicallyh a fear of the CO2 tax BS. North Dakota should have built it without Minnesota and sold power spot market.
Here is an interesting story from the St. Paul Pioneer Press. http://www.twincities.com/ci_15644449?nclick_check=1
Minnesota air pollution? It's not as bad as you think
You might believe air pollution is on the rise. You would be wrong. 40 years after the Clean Air Act, the U.S. and Minnesota have drastically cut emissions. So why doesn't anyone know about it?
Very interesting. Thank you for the update. Wouldn't it be interesting if four years from now, after OTTR and MDU get their money back for Big Stone, "someone" decides to take it out of moth balls and complete the project.
ReplyDeleteI would assume 3M is only one of several big users of electricity in Minnesota. I know the Yahoo, Google, Microsoft server farms use huge amounts of electricity. I assume they won't be looking to Minnesota to expand.
The "saver switch" is not as bad as it sound. In residential uses it hooks up only to the central AC where the compressors can be turned off for up to fifteen minutes at a time. It is debatable how much electricity this saves since the AC compressor will make up for lost time once it starts again. People told me that it gets a bit muggy inside when the saver switch is working.
ReplyDelete3M uses a lot but the big users here are the iron range taconite processing (lower grade iron ore processed to high iron content pellets) and a very large scrap steel "mini-mill" on the Mississippi near St. Paul. All can be shut down during heat waves making the Minnesota grid quite robust but it can be stretched only so far. Taconite for new domestic steel is way down and the scrap mini mill demand is way down. They make rebar and basic structural steel, I beams and such but the domestic demand for these is way down. Increasingly, local scrap steel is shredded, cubed and sent via barge to the Gulf of Mexico and then other countries. Mini-mills make money by converting scrap steel into rebars and common structural steel. Good products but they are new construction related. Mini-mills use electric arc furnaces which use a lot of electricity.
The point of this is that as the region grows, even in a downturn electricity demand will increase and we are now eating up the slack capacity. In the Twin Cities we have some of what I would can "we played hard to get and weren't being got economic (construction) activity. Primo construction locations held back by final "sprouting" but this is only the primo stuff. Figure electricity has a 500 mile "leash" before you get excessive line losses.
BTW: The so-called "server farms" are not big electrical users but electrical demand is highest during peak electrical demand. I used to work in the high end mainframe field and the "big irons" were water cooled! Server stacks were air cooled and didn't get that got. Basically a "server stack" can be up to fifty high end laptop "guts" sharing a single display and mouse. There are banks of what are basically desktop big hard drives and "jukeboxes" full of double sided "blu-ray" type data disks with more mundane "paperwork".
The point is that the established data centers are using less energy. If you build a modern data center from scratch that will suck up a lot of juice but that is a minor cost. Minnesota has not had the blackouts/brownouts they have had on the West Coast.
BTW: Google use the 3M model to develop Google. I have been leading a so far lame effort to have Google establish a facility on the Twin Cities 3M corporate campus.
Cross posted at my http://fourfiftygas.com (why retype?
Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I frequently do the same thing -- send "trial balloons" in e-mail to others and then "copy and paste" to my site. Gives me an opportunity to think about them before posting.
I guess I was mistaken: I always thought server farms used a lot of electricity.