Minnesota Could Start Getting Electricity From New North Dakota Coal Plant

Updates

August 23, 2016: Minnesota calls it quits. Won't appeal this further. Agrees to take coal-generated electricity from North Dakota. 

Minnesota will not appeal a federal court ruling that called unconstitutional a law restricting importing electricity from coal-fired electric generating plants.

North Dakota filed the suit against the Minnesota Next Generation Energy Act and won in a federal district court. A federal appeals court panel in June agreed with the district court, leaving the U.S. Supreme Court the only opportunity for Minnesota to win.
But on Monday, the Minnesota Commerce Department and Public Utilities Commission announced the state will not appeal.

The decision means that Minnesota utilities may buy electricity produced in North Dakota plants, where they generate power with locally mined coal known as lignite.
Minnesota's law, designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, also bans new coal-fired power plants in the state. That part of the law remains on the books.

Original Post

 

More information regarding Minnesota Senate voting to lift coal restrictions at this link. This is not a done deal yet; the House had to vote (though a House committee approved the bill). The governor has said he supports the bill.

For North Dakota, this paragraph is interesting:

Sponsors of the bill said the immediate impetus is to allow Minnesota's Great River Energy company to sell to Minnesota customers power that's generated by a new plant under construction in North Dakota. The company is not allowed to do so under the restrictions in current law and top state officials in North Dakota, including the governor, have urged Minnesota lawmakers to drop the restrictions.

See original posting here.

With regard to that "new" North Dakota coal-powered electricity plant:

• Known as the Spiritwood Station
• The new coal plant is a Great River Energy product; headquarters in Minnesota
• $350 million coal-fired power plant near Jamestown
• Was to go on-line last year (2010) but project slowed (on verge of stopping) when Minnesota appeared ready to back out of coal-produced electricity
• The new date for the plant to go on-line: January 1, 2012
• This is GRE's first baseload power plant built since 1981
• It will be North Dakota's first coal-fired power plant in a quarter century

This from the AP story today (linked above):

[The] money [that] Minnesota utilities spend on energy produced by burning coal in other states amounts to "dollars out of our communities, dollars out of our pockets we could otherwise use to build homegrown and distributed sources of energy in Minnesota," said Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis. "It would unwind a tremendous amount of economic progress we're making and could still continue to make."

As noted in the original posting (also linked above), this is a very, very interesting turn of events, assuming the bill is eventually passed. All indications are that it will be passed.  

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The rest is just idle rambling about why wind energy will lead to significantly higher costs for public utilities, due to (un)anticipated consequences. 

It should be noted, that all things being equal with regard to energy requirements, wind farms will actually increase the cost of the use of coal by making the coal plant less efficient. Wind will never be able to replace coal. Coal plants will continue to produce the bulk of baseload electricity, but coal plants cannot be turned on and off with a simple click of a mouse button. Even when wind kicks in for surges, coal plants will continue to burn coal as a back-up when the wind ceases to blow. This electricity is not stored. So, unless I'm missing something or don't understand electricity production, the coal plant might be able to reduce the amount of coal being burned (but, wow, that has to be tricky) while turbines are spinning, but the moment the wind stops, the coal plants have to surge. 

It will be very interesting to see peer-reviewed studies ten years from now showing how much less efficient coal-plants will have become due to having to support wind-generated electricity.

If there's a glitch or a delay in the coal plant responding, folks will notice brown-outs or temporary loss of electricity. Maybe surge protectors and or uninterrupted supply units will come back into fashion. I  remember having to buy surge protectors to protect my computer when stationed overseas. I never bought an uninterrupted supply unit but many individuals did, and, of course, businesses will have to have such units.

In addition to burning coal on a "stand-by" basis, the utility will have to invest in sophisticated automated systems to manage the interface of wind-generated electricity and coal-generated electricity. 

As long as I'm rambled this long, I might as well continue. Utilities will pass the cost of additional transmission lines to consumers. Wind-generated electricity will have to be "brought" to the utility or tie in at some substation to be placed on the existing grid. Right now, the grids are in place: a "centralized" power plant with transmission lines going to customers. 

It's been my observation that wind farms are scattered across the landscape, and not centralized to any one location. So, now instead of just outgoing distribution transmission lines, utilities will have to install incoming transmission lines from these scattered wind farms to tie in to the existing grid.

Lots of additional costs associated with wind-generated electricity and with coal burning continuously and less efficiently while wind turbines are turning, it's questionable how much the carbon footprint is being reduced. But it will make some folks feel good to see all those wind turbines.