Projects urged for renewable energy mandate; critics question motives

To meet Minnesota's goal of getting 25 percent of its electricity from clean renewable wind energy by 2025, the state's utilities would need to build a 345-kilovolt line between Granite Falls and Shakopee at a cost of $460 million, according to a study released Friday.

The 125-mile line would replace a 260-kilovolt power line that is 60 years old and inadequate for bringing more power from the wind farms springing up in southern and western Minnesota and the nearby Dakotas, said the utilities, led by Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy and Great River Energy of Maple Grove.

"What we need to upgrade is the weak link in the system, and that's (the) Shakopee to Granite Falls (line)," said Kent Larson, vice president of transmission for Xcel Energy.

But those plans would come on top of a complex, $1.7 billion project being pushed by a group of utilities, also led by Xcel and Great River, to put up a quartet of high-voltage lines crisscrossing the state.

That project, dubbed CapX 2020, proposes three 345-kilovolt lines: between Fargo, N.D., and Monticello; from Brookings, S.D., to the Twin Cities; and from the Twin Cities to La Crosse, Wis. The fourth is a smaller project around Bemidji.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is expected to hear arguments in the case of the three bigger CapX lines this spring.

Adding another 345-kilovolt line from Granite Falls to Shakopee would push the price tag for all new transmission in the state to more than $2 billion, which would be picked up mainly by Minnesota ratepayers.

Skeptics say Minnesota can meet its renewable energy needs without the expensive new transmission lines.

David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said the proposal is part of a plan by the utilities to add on projects one by one in order to export massive amounts of wind power from the Dakotas through Minnesota to Chicago and the East Coast.

"This is metastasizing as we speak," Morris said.

But the lines' supporters say there is a bigger picture to consider. Other states have renewable energy standards too, said Will Kaul, transmission vice president at Great River Energy and chairman of CapX 2020.

To get the most out of the upgrade to the Granite Falls-to-Shakopee line, the utilities in their study proposed utilities in Wisconsin build a new high-voltage line from La Crosse, where one of the CapX 2020 lines ends, to Madison.

The Granite Falls-to-Shakopee line could deliver up to 2,000 megawatts of wind power to Minnesota while the La Crosse-to-Madison line could bring an additional 1,600 megawatts, boosting the total to 3,600 megawatts, the utilities said.

The line would allow Wisconsin utilities to buy some of that power too, Kaul said.

A study of the proposed Wisconsin line is expected in 2010. There is no cost estimate.

Minnesota utilities need an estimated 4,000 megawatts to 6,000 megawatts of renewable energy to meet Minnesota's Renewable Energy Standard set by the Legislature in 2007.