Legalectric

EXCELSIOR ENERGY’S MESABA PROJECT

PARTIAL DOCUMENT REPOSITORY

Well, a bit more than 20 years ago… January 15, 2002, just after the start of the legislative session, I was at an energy committee meeting, Senate? House? I think Senate was first, then heard again at House, and the following year they got their legislation through as a part of the 2003 Prairie Island bill.

• The Excelsior Energy link I’m using is compliments of waybackmachine. Note that now, if you plug in “excelsiorenergy.com” it becomes “excelsiorcapital.com (Excelsior Energy Capital).” essentially at a marina at 21960 Minnetonka Blvd.! Related?

Anyway, there was a presentation back in 2002 about the greatest thing since sliced bread (NOT!), a coal gasification project proposed for “somewhere” on the Range. Here’s what they presented:

Note the parts about “brownfield” and “existing infrastructure.” LIES, it’s that simple. Here’s what their site looked like, this was at the DOE and locals site visit in 2005:

Starting in 2005, I was representing “mncoalgasplant,” landowners and residents near the proposed project, joined in tandem by Citizens Against the Mesaba Project (CAMP) (site circa 2013 with live links, thanks waybackmachine!). We had such active folks, every hearing was PACKED, and eventually the project faded, never formally declared dead, but piece by piece, it went away.

HOWEVER, Excelsior Energy did manage to get an save passed by the legislature for a natural gas plant:

Week before last, I picked up files from a cohort who shall remain unnamed, and am scanning in boxes of files, to post here, and recycle hard copies for biomass (UGH, but that’s what Red Wing does. Thanks, Xcel Energy!). I’ll be posting them, some interesting stuff if you’re into energy and political and capital intrigue, some purely inside baseball that no one will care about.

MONEY TRACKING – Spreadsheets and invoices to IRRB for reimbursement

Various Contractor Invoices (some redacted)

What a pain in the patoot that was — TWO ENTIRE WASTEBASKET OF SCANNING!

Just WOW! Yeah, that WOW too… Today was the meeting of House Climate and Energy Policy and Finance, and check out the presentations:

Attachments:

• HF XXX/BE133 (Stephenson) Permitting Reform – 2/2/2022
• Electric Transmission System Report – 2/3/2022
• Agenda – 2/9/2022
• Minutes for 2-3-22 – 2/9/2022
• Minutes for 2-8-22 – 2/9/2022
• Presentation-Engelking – 2/9/2022
• Presentation-MISO – 2/9/2022
• Presentation-Soholt – 2/9/2022
• Letter-MP – 2/9/2022
• Letter-MRES – 2/9/2022
• Letter-Overland – 2/9/2022
• Presentation-PUC-Updated.pdf – 2/10/2022

The good news is that MRES did have challenges to the proposed language in HF XXX/BE133 (Stephenson) Permitting Reform, but aside from MRES, what a bunch of transmission toadies.

Commerce’s Electric Transmission System Report and a PUC Commissioner ADVOCATING for more transmission Presentation-PUC-Updated.pdf, good grief, there’s just no excuse.

More of this?

No thanks…

Needless to say, I should have pushed to get on the list to testify, a letter isn’t enough.

The Notice of Comment Period has been issued:

Here’s the plan to review:

2021 Biennial Xmsn Projects Report

Here’s the poop:

How to file comments? See below, and be sure to ask to be on the service list! If you want live links to make it easier, use link to Notice above.

We’ve seen increased promotion of even more transmission, with claims it’s NEEDED, sorely needed, to reach renewable goals. What utter crap…

We’ve also seen “Grid North Partners” spreading their misinformation, working on making a “CapX 2050” happen.

Do we really need to do this AGAIN?!?!?!

Apparently, they think we do… sigh…

This appeared recently, an article linked to this blurb, and it’s disturbing:

Right… read it and get ready for another decade long fight. I figure I’ve got that long and more, so let’s get to it! Are you ready?

Transition… transmission… transition… transmission…

The June 25, 1998 blackout report needs to be on the interwebs available to the world.

June 25, 1998? That’s the night of the transmission fail that disconnected the Midwest from the Eastern Interconnect. That question was asked by Minnesota Power’s attorney of each and every witness, I think other than MP, but maybe MP witnesses too, in the Arrowhead transmission project hearing, circa 1999-2000. There were cries of “Hospitals will go dark without the Arrowhead project,” “We’re going to freeze in the dark in an incubator” which became “We’re going to freeze in the dark on a respirator without a job” — it was so histrionic.

The Arrowhead transmission project was project 13J of the WRAO Report, and the WIREs Report, which presented many transmission lines, but chose the Arrowhead transmission project as the “be all and end all” of transmission in the Midwest, that it would fix all the transmission problems:

The hearing went forward, 2 weeks in Minnesota, where MP got an exemption from Minnesota Power Plant siting law, and for TWO MONTHS in Wisconsin, for Round 1, then 2 weeks after the cost went way up, and another 3-5 days of hearing later when cost went up again. They got their permit, it’s up…

But in that first hearing, I did get to introduce the report that showed that the June 25, 1998, blackout was NOT caused by too little capacity, it was not caused by an unreliable transmission system. It was caused by corporate greed, transmission operators running the Prairie Island-Byron 345kV’s TCEX flow over the limit, disregarding operating guides, and disregarding requests and demands to ramp the power down, violating MAPP Operating Standards and NERC Operating Policies. SHAME, NSP, SHAME!!! And MP was so tacky, trying to attribute their desire for bulk power transfer to the blackout, that the Arrowhead project would save us. Yeah, right…

Here’s the report, below, it’s a gem, I’m posting this today because I’m shoveling off my desk and there are a lot of gems here, so posting them will get them out into the world in perpetuity — can’t disappear something from the internet! Scanning them in is taking a while, a royal and dusty pain in the patoot, but just for you inquiring minds, HERE IT IS:

Here are a couple snippets, starting with p. 2:

Bottom line?

OPERATE WITHIN OPERATING GUIDE LIMITS!!

DOH!

The report goes on and on with stupid human tricks – the flow was NOT reduced by NSP System Operators:

From pps 10-11:

So if the operators had been doing the job, not focused on keeping that line operating with all that power flowing through it, selling that power, the blackout may not have happened. Great…

And for some reason, NSP operators were not communicating:

300 MW above the operating guide limits:

OPERATE WITHIN OPERATING GUIDE LIMITS!! DOH!

Operator error is a too-generous way to put it — but for the efforts to NOT reduce power flows, the inadequate response of system operators and their failure to communicate the degree of the problem, the blackout may not have happened. And then utilities have the nerve to say that because of the June 25, 1998 blackout, we need the 13j Arrowhead transmission project?