Prairie Island Uprate – who needs it???
October 26th, 2012
Xcel is now admitting they don’t need the Prairie Island uprate:
It’s something even they can’t ignore:
This new information stems from our most recent refueling outage at PI, where the extended outage allows us to modify the schedule for future refueling outages. This change further and materially reduces the anticipated benefits of the PI uprates, which had already been substantially reduced from those predicted in the Certificate of Need case authorizing the uprates. …We note that, in light of the total system costs, $10 million PVRR is not a meaningful difference. In essence, before considering risk factors, the Strategist model does not draw a clear distinction between the two scenarios, thus no longer identifies a clear benefit associated with implementation of the uprates.
They go on and state it more directly:
Our updated plan agreed with the Department of Commerce’s recommendation of a 400 to 600 MW need, which would accommodate a decision to not proceed with the uprates.
…
As a result, we conclude that a decision not to proceed with the uprates would in no way pose risk to customers of an insufficient supply to meet their needs.
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At this point, we believe it is reasonable to conclude that further investment in the project will not benefit our customers.
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Based on these considerations, we conclude that the risks of the project outweigh the expected benefits, and customers would be better off if this project did not proceed.
I’m not sure that’s clear enough for the PUC, it’s on the agenda and Staff isn’t clear in their recommendation. Alan and I fired this off Tuesday:
To access the uprate docket, GO HERE and plug in dockets 08-509 and 08-510. Note they’re “08” dockets, which was after the electric crash, but before they admitted demand was down and before we had such a good record of demand going down, staying down, down, down.
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