This month, Xcel Energy asked state regulators in Colorado to extend the operating life of the coal-fired Comanche Unit 2 for another year. Xcel Energy seems to understand the importance…
As American Experiment’s Bill Glahn reported last week, Xcel Energy is proposing to double its battery storage at the Sherco coal plant in Becker, from 300 MW to 600 MW…
From a company news release issued yesterday, Xcel Energy to build Upper Midwest’s largest battery storage site:600 megawatts at Sherco Energy Hub among a series of planned battery, solar projects…
A recent letter to the editor in the Star Tribune — from a Minnesota Department of Commerce official, no less — argued that “wind and sunshine are free.” Minnesotans are…
Last week, the Department of Energy announced it would invest $625 million in coal production and coal-fired generation activities. The same day, the Department of the Interior announced it would…
Today, the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Walker Orenstein published an assessment of the challenges facing Becker after Amazon abandoned its planned data center: For now, the land will remain vacant. In…
Xcel Energy proposed to issue a $318 million rebate to Minnesota customers in a press release on Monday. More than half of the refund ($176 million) will come from federal…
On Friday, February 28, the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) will take up the proposal by Amazon for 600 MW of diesel backup generators to serve their massive, planned data…
The “good” news is that the state’s largest electric utility, Xcel Energy, will be meeting Minnesota’s mandate for 100% “carbon-free” electricity five years early. The better news for consumers is…
Happy New Year! As an Xcel electric customer, you may have received the email on Wednesday morning reading: To recap, Xcel is asking the state PUC to approve a 9.6…
In 2024, people visited AmericanExperiment.org an incredible 3.2 million times — a new record! But what exactly were they reading? These are American Experiment’s Top 10 Most Read Stories of…
Data center construction mean running natural gas plants longer for Xcel Energy, according to remarks by Ryan Long, president of Xcel Energy’s Minnesota and Dakotas division, at an MPUC conference…
Southwestern Minnesota farmers and residents left no doubt about their objections to Xcel Energy’s proposed billion dollar power line for renewable energy at a recent hearing before an administrative law…
Solar cannot ‘replace’ coal power.
There is no sense in which a solar power plant, however large, could substitute for the round-the-clock electricity provided by a coal-fired power plant. Yet, here we are. The Minneapolis…
The pioneers who spearheaded the systems that make up the modern electric grid, such as Thomas Edison and his centralized power plants and Nikola Tesla and his alternating-current generators, led…
They may be virtually powerless to stop Xcel Energy from forcing another high-voltage transmission line through their area, but that hasn’t stopped landowners from Marshall to Becker from trying to…
On January 4, the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) issued a two-page letter to Xcel Energy urging them to delay the closure of the two remaining units at the…
On New Year’s Eve, 2023, Xcel Energy shut down Unit 2 at the coal-fired Sherburne County (Sherco) generating station. Unit 2 was a 680-megawatt (MW) facility capable of powering 25…
Last Friday, the Star Tribune reported that the cost of Xcel Energy’s proposed transmission line from Becker, Minnesota, to Lyon County, has more than doubled, leaping from $528 million to…
Last week, Xcel Energy announced it is seeking to install 1,200 megawatts (MW) of new wind capacity in southwest Minnesota by 2027, which would constitute a 25 percent increase in…
In late September, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC), all of whom were appointed or reappointed by Governor Tim Walz, approved Xcel Energy’s expansion plans for the Sherco solar project, which…
Wind and solar electricity prices are soaring in response to supply chain disruptions, rising costs for materials and labor, interest rate hikes, and increasing costs to connect wind and solar…
Yesterday I attended the Midwest Reliability Organization’s Hybrid Reliability meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota. One of the presenters was from Form Energy, a battery startup focused on building low-cost, iron-air…