A huge thanks to a reader for sending me this link and pointing out the reason why
Minnesota Power built this plant in Wisconsin.
- Nemadji Trail Energy Center
- split costs between Minnesota Power and Dairyland Power Cooperative
- location: Superior, Wisconsin
- $700 million natural gas power plant
- 550-megawatt plant
- $1.3 million / MW (high end?)
- if approved, construction could start in 2020; complete by 2025
- the proposal includes "a suite" of renewable energy proposals that include new wind and solar generation (something required these days to get bigger non-renewable projects approved)
- as an off-set, MN will buy power from a new wind farm in southwestern MN and a solar array
- wind farm: Nobles 2, built by Tenaska; will come on-line in 2020; 250-MW wind farm (at 20%, that amounts to 50 MW)
- solar farm: 10 MW (whoo-hoo); Cypress Creek Renewables; could come online as soon as 2019
But, possibly, this is the big reason Superior, WI, was chosen as the site:
"If everyone just built the green stuff, that’s when we could
find ourselves with reliability that could be very precarious,” Pierce
said, adding that the utility’s biggest customers — taconite plants on
the Iron Range — depend on the grid 24/7. “I can’t emphasize enough the
importance of our natural resource-based economy and the need for
reliability and affordability.”
Power generation from
natural gas is easier to control than coal, on top of being less
carbon-intensive. Natural gas prices have also been at historically low
levels in recent years, though growing demand from new and proposed
power plants could change that.
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