It’s that time of the year, errrrrr, it’s that time of every other year… time for the Minnesota Transmission Owners:

It’s filed in Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Docket M-21-111.

The Biennial Transmission Projects Report is required by statute, but there are no longer public meetings, and I must admit, I had pushed and promoted a lot initially, but ran out of time and energy for such a … ahem… waste of time. See Minn. Stat. §216B.2425 for how it’s supposed to go.

If history is any guide, it seems Initial Comments are about a month and a half out, mid-January, with Reply Comments another month and a half out, so mid-March. I’ll put it on the calendar and send a reminder around.

There’s nothing really exciting that I see, at first glance, but I did enjoy seeing the NERC Report excerpts. Last time they included the NERC Reliability as a separate filing, this time they included excerpts at the tail end of the report, above.

Here’s the full NERC Report — it comes out every year, and has a great assortment of important info, about reliability margins, load forecasts, and predictions of generation mix for energy and peak demand. I LOVE THE NERC REPORT!! Here’s the most recent ones — they used to come out in October, now it’s December:

NERC 2020 Long-Term Reliability Assessment

This is how reliability was defined in the transmission world decades ago, circa 1999 NERC Long-Term Reliability Assessment:

Keep in mind that now transmission is no longer about reliability — it’s about economics, so it’s a very different type of evaluation.

Who cares about the NERC Report? Over the decades, the NERC reports have looked at the various areas of the country, based on the grid’s organization, and it evaluates the system’s ability to provide electricity. What I like about it, though, is that the charts, graphs, circles, and arrows belie the party line, like all the talk about decreasing coal and fossil fuel generation, but look at projections for MISO:

Here’s the chart for MISO — the devil is in the details — look at the predominance of fossil fuel:

Remember how the utilities were blathering about the NEED for transmission, and that the transmission build-out would decrease need and reliance on reserve margin — at that time, MISO reserve margin was 15%.

They got their billions in transmission and we’re paying them way too much for it, and look at the reserve margin, the last line in that chart:

18%

Oh, well… I must have misunderstood… SNORT!

And yeah, the purpose of that big transmission build-out morphed into “IT’S FOR WIND!” yet remember, the CapX 2020 lines start at the coal plants and head east:

And the MISO MVP 17 Portfolio of projects supporting coal:

It’s exhausting, dizzying, seeing these scams spinning through, and yet here we go with “Grid North Partners.” Just NO!

Again, there will be opportunity for Initial and Reply Comments, expect Notice in a couple weeks, with Initial Comments probably due in mid-January. So later… in the meantime, look at the NERC report and compare with all the blather you’re hearing, particularly with COP26 in the works.

Here’s the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission “deliberating” and deciding to DENY our Petition for Environmental Assessment Worksheet. What a concept, environmental review of a wind project. It’s never happened in Minnesota, and 2,500+ MW of wind sited, sans wind specific criteria and rules. DOH!! PUC has actual and constructive notice that there are noise problems with wind. Another DOH!

Friday, Freeborn Wind is before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, where Association of Freeborn County Landowners’ Motions for Reconsideration are on the agenda:

20192-150272-01-1_Motion to Remand to ALJ

UPDATE:

AFCL_Motion-Addendum to Remand to ALJ_FINAL FULL PACKET

Why update? Because we got more juicy details.  As I was filing the “Motion to Remand to ALJ” I got an email from Commerce-EERA’s John Wachtler, and he said that there were no emails, that Commerce deletes them after 90 days.  Well, emails weren’t all that was requested, and yet, NOTHING was produced. NOTHING!

Here’s what we asked for:

Exhibit C_Commerce-Agreement_Data Practices Act Request

Why am I not surprised…

Remember when AWA Goodhue and Pickens were pushing that wind project in Goodhue County and accused the local folks of “promiscuous ice fishing” and baiting eagles?  Well, above is what Goodhue Wind Truth’s Marie McNamara had to say about that… and we’re still at it.

A couple months ago, we filed yet another rulemaking petition, this one was the 2nd for wind rulemaking in Minnesota, to address the big holes in Minn. R. Ch. 7854, the wind siting rules.

Petition4Rulemaking_FINAL

The Commission wasn’t thrilled, and denied the petition:

20189-146644-01_Order Denying Petition

DENY THE PETITION?  WHEN THERE ARE NO WIND SITING RULES?  Yeah, right… so here’s what we filed today:

Goodhue Wind Truth_Petition for Reconsideration

At long last, the final round of Comments on the 5+ year long rulemaking have been filed.  A five year long process to enact the changes consistent with legislation passed in 2005, 12 years ago.  WHAT!?!?!  Yes, that’s how long it’s taken.  These are rules based on the Minnesota statutes for Certificate of Need (Minn. Stat. 216B.243) and the “Power Plant Siting Act” (Minn. Stat. Ch. 216E), which is transmission routing and power plant siting.

Here are the Reply Comments, and note there are very few:

Public Intervenors – No CapX 2020, U-CAN, North Route Group & Goodhue Wind Truth – FINAL_May 31 2017

McNamasra GWT Reply_20175-132415-01

Commerce EERA Reply_20175-132345-01

ITC Midwest_Reply_20175-132421-02

OtterTail Power_Reply_20175-132275-01

Xcel Energy_Reply_20175-132417-01

Next step — on the agenda at a future Public Utilities Commission meeting, where they’ll discuss changes, hopefully we’ll have oral argument of the parties and comments from the public, and then the rules are formally released to the public for public comment, a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge, and then back to the Commission for approval.  Probably it will be August… given the public comment period and hearing, this will be at least a SIX YEAR PROCESS!