January 31st, 2018 / Star Tribune By Mike Hughlett Minnesota utility regulators have approved a $13 million rate hike for Minnesota Power, about 40 percent of what the company had been seeking. Minnesota Power’s residential customers will see a 3.5 percent rate increase with the action taken Tuesday by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC)….

January 24, 2018 / St. Cloud Times By Annie Levenson-Falk Ben Fowke, the president and CEO of Xcel Energy, recently announced an ambitious plan to cut the utility’s carbon emissions 80 percent by 2030. To reach that goal, Xcel Energy will double down on clean energy. It plans to generate 60 percent renewable energy by…

January 2, 2018 / Finance & Commerce By Frank Jossi Energy generation from wind and solar has grown significantly in Minnesota. Utilities have announced the retirement of thousands of megawatts of coal plants in the next decade. Popular technologies such as electric vehicles, sophisticated thermostats, battery storage and rooftop solar hold great potential to produce…

December 22, 2017 / Utility Dive By Herman K. Trabish The pilot program, to determine if price signals can get customers to shift energy usage away from peak times, has garnered wide acclaim. The main concern? it doesn’t start soon enough. Some say pilot projects are a way to avoid the risk of real innovation,…

November 3, 2017 / Rochester Post-Bulletin By Randy Petersen   A peek at Rochester’s energy future was a bit hazy Thursday. The four panelists on the UMR Connects panel agreed many questions and constraints remain while the city is tied to a Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency contract for electricity generation through 2030, but they…