Legalectric

Here’s the GRE HQ, stolen from GRE’s site. It’s the former home of Minnesota’s first nuclear plant, the little bitty one that my father helped design the conventional side, the steam stuff, not the nuclear, though I do remember playing with a geiger counter as a kid.

Today it’s time for the NM-SPG meeting up in Elk River, transmission planning for the area. And so hot off the press, here’s the abbreviated report with presentations below:

TRANSMISSION PLANNING

The first issue was one that I care about — the 2007 Transmission Plan (Minn. Stat. 216B.2425). There’s a problem because “nobody’s showing up” and so their thought is to eliminate the zonal meetings. Ummmmm, no… They will hold them this next round, but then what?
Here’s the Minnesota Transmission Owners site.

Here’s the CapX 2020 site.

CAPX 2020 – Jared GRE

Phase I projects and Brookings to Twin Cities
Slides they’ve been giving to County and Township routes
Projected Population Growth 1.3 million by 2050
Job growth 500,00 new jobs
Projected Electric Demand growth 4,500=
CapX Group 1 –
Four lines work together to ensure reliability for the region
Lines meet most urgent need
Lines will serve as out let for whatever generation resources are built
CapX Brookings
250 miles of 345kV, “access to new generation

CoN – Based on SW MN-Twin Cities EHV completed Nov 2005
Additional studies – Generation Alternative for load serving
MISO queue additions, Lake Marion xfmr overload – overloaded before they put it in
Combined CapX Groupe I loss analysis
Load serving, Marshall, Franklin, Lake Marion, New Ethanol loads
Underlying system study to see impact on lower levels

Cost allocation – MISO RCEB Analysis
BISO Baseline Reliability Study – MTEP
CapX Notice Plan – in 30 days or so.
EOM – PUC meeting on Exemptions
Brookings project – Randy Fordice 763-241-2463 rfordice@grenergy.com

Reliability project or generation project – MTEP process, studying now, some results on Fargo project
Load use more like 2004 load and not 2016
MTEP 06 – will be in MTEP 07 if determined to be reliability projects

Fargo CapX line
Corrects loss of bulk lines – Center-Jamestown-Maple River
Dorsey Forbes
Local load serving benefits – Alexandria, St. Cloud
Loss Reduction of 100MW real-time
Fargo need – not until 2018
Alexandria – big problem is loss of Grant County-Elbow Lake Lind
St Cloud – this is the primary local problem – loss of Benton County – Granite City 115kV, St. Regis load drop, cannot Reconfigure GraniteCity without new source

So, seems to me that CapX is doing a good job of proving it’s NOT needed.

Here are a few of the juicier presentations:

Big Stone II Transmission Update – Phase 6

CapX 2020 Fargo – Metro Xmsn Line

CapX 2020 Brookings – SE Metro Xmsn Line

And here’s a presentation using RES as justification for more unnecessary transmission:

RES & Transmission

Click HERE for RES Language

Now doesn’t that make you wonder just what they were thinking when they passed an RES with transmission language in there???