And AGAIN! It’s the Power Plant Siting Act Annual Hearing! You can attend in person, MASKED, or via webex or phone. Primary documents are posted below.

December 20, 2021 @ 9:30

PUC Large Meeting Room

121 – 7th Place East – 3rd Floor

St. Paul, MN

Comments? BE SURE TO NOTE DOCKET NUMBER FOR COMMENTS:

PUC Docket E999/PR-21-18 & OAH Docket 65-2500-37832

Written comments will be accepted through January 10, 2022, by 4:30 p.m.

Note notice only to those “who have requested notice” above? Nope, notice should be to all who are on service and project lists for projects active in the calendar year. Thankfully EERA does give notice to a lot more than just those “who have requested notice” (see “Notice & Service Lists” link posted above).

From the EQB Monitor:

Here are the projects EERA’s Summary says were approved — note that for wind it does NOT list applicable parts of 216E, such as Minn. Stat. 216E.03, Subd. 7!

Meanwhile, the update of rules for PPSA siting, Minn. R. ch. 7850, is stalled out again, WITHDRAWN by the PUC last Thursday, supposedly based on many comments made over the last few weeks by a bunch of people and orgs who were utterly absent through the NINE YEARS of this rulemaking proceeding. My grits are FRIED! The PUC Agenda Item starts at the very end of the meeting, and note the bogus statements about the “why” of this rulemaking. Let’s be clear here — it’s due to the 2005 legislative changes, SIXTEEN YEARS AGO. See PUC Docket R-12-1246. Good grief… Discussion starts at 2:48:28:

It’s out, the Administrative Law Judge’s report on this year’s Power Plant Siting Act Annual Hearing. The hearing this year was particularly frustrating, horrible turnout, and I’ve got a part in that, because I didn’t spend the massive amounts of time getting notice out to people, drumming up interest, so there is that…

Here’s the Report:

Here are a couple of documents to check out that I included with a written comment:

RIGHT NOW! It’s the PPSA Annual Hearing… sigh… here we go again.

Go to webex, Event # 146 311 2620. The powerpoint slides will be here (and will also be filed on eDockets).

To be able to comment, you have to get on the phone 866-609-6127, Conference ID: 4449079, and to comment, you need to press #1 and get in queue.

Here is the Commerce info about this year’s projects:

And for the record, folks, note that wind is not exempt from many of the parts of the PPSA:

It’s that time again, the Power Plant Siting Act Annual Hearing.

Friday, November 20, 2020

10 a.m. start

It’s all online, and the only way to participate is over the phone.

Here’s the notice and directions on how to show up:

Here are some prior PPSA Annual Hearing reports:

Here are the reports from prior PPSA Annual Hearings:

2000 Summary of Proceedings

2000 Report EQB

2001 Summary of Proceedings

2001 Report EQB

2002 Summary of Proceedings

2002 Report to EQB

2003 Summary of Proceedings

2003 Report to EQB

2004 Summary of Proceedings

2004 Report to EQB

2005 Report to PUC

2006 Report to PUC – Docket 06-1733

2007 Report to PUC – Docket 07-1579

2008 Report to PUC – Docket 08-1426

2009 Report to PUC – Docket 09-1351

2010 Report to PUC – Docket 10-222

2011 Report to PUC – Docket 11-324

2012 Report to PUC – Docket 12-360

2013 Report to PUC – Docket 13-965

2014 Summary Report– Docket 14-887

2015 Summary Report – Docket 15-785

2016 Summary Report – Docket 16-18

2017 Summary Report – Docket 17-18 – Download

2018 Summary Report – Docket 18-18 – Download

Why hold a PPSA Annual Hearing — sometimes I do wonder what the point is, because nothing is ever done about it — but it’s statutory:

216E.07 ANNUAL HEARING.

The commission shall hold an annual public hearing at a time and place prescribed by rule in order to afford interested persons an opportunity to be heard regarding any matters relating to the siting of large electric generating power plants and routing of high-voltage transmission lines. At the meeting, the commission shall advise the public of the permits issued by the commission in the past year. The commission shall provide at least ten days but no more than 45 days’ notice of the annual meeting by mailing or serving electronically, as provided in section 216.17, a notice to those persons who have requested notice and by publication in the EQB Monitor and the commission’s weekly calendar.

An odd notice came out today — an extension of the Power Plant Siting Act Annual Hearing comment period, “due to late-filed materials…”

Late filed materials??? Whatever could that be… SNORT!

Naaaah, more likely than not it’s the Comments I’ve filed in all the related wind dockets, plus the PPSA dockets, regarding “ground factor” an inappropriate use of anything but 0.0 as a ground factor:

That’s all about the many wind projects that are improperly using 0.5 and 0.7 ground factor. 0.0 is the only ground factor because the turbine is elevated, and from the source to the “receptor” it is a DIRECT hit! It’s really not hard to understand.

There are so many projects, ALL of the wind projects listed in this year’s Commerce-EERA handout for the PPSA:

These projects were all permitted using bogus noise modeling with GIGO input assumption of 0.5 or even 0.7 for ground factor!!! REALLY! These:

And these:

Guess somebody is wanting time to rebut! May it means we need a contested case, eh?!?! SNORT!

But then, even developer’s expert Mike Hankard agrees that 0.5 is not appropriate for an elevated source like a wind turbine:

It’ll be interesting to see what they have to say.

To look at the PPSA Annual Hearing docket go HERE and enter docket 19-18, using 19 (year number)- 18 (docket number).