The Road To Minnesota

There is a tag "Road_To_Minnesota" but it's becoming a bit unwieldy having to run through all the posts to track that issue.

I will still have stand-alone posts on Minnesota's energy plans but will track them here (if I don't forget) similar to the way I track other on-going stories.

Today's story: journalists in Minnesota really, really excited about Connexus' plant to embark upon a solar-plus-storage project, that when completed, will be the largest in the Midwest. It could be as large as 40 MW -- wow, 40 MW. Connexus is the state's largest electric cooperative. I sure hope the members of the co-op are watching how much they are going to pay for this science project. I think they are going to be sorely disappointed but at least they will go to bed at night feeling good that they are doing their tiny bit to make Algore happy. [Update: one day later -- when trying to find the cost of this solar-storage project, I noted that I made a mistake. This is not a 40-WM project. It's a 20 MW, 40MWh project. It's very, very subtle.]

By the way, from a January 11, 2015, post:

• solar storage cost: 552¢ per kilowatt hour (kWh) on a levelized cost of energy basis” 
• batteries: contribute about 535¢ per kWh to the total costs and the solar PV system would contribute the remaining 17¢ per kWh
• to put this in perspective, the average retail rate of electricity for residential customers in Hawaii is about 36¢ per kWh
• Moodys:  The capital cost of the batteries included in a residential off-grid solar plus batteries system currently cost about $500 per kWh
• to achieve cost parity with the grid, the capital cost of batteries would need to decline to about $20 per kWh, based on Moody’s calculations
• absent a major technological breakthrough, battery costs are likely to remain above $20 per kWh for several decades. In 2012, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that battery costs would fall as low as $135 per kWh by 2035 in the best case scenario