UPDATE: Strangely biased and TWICE removed!  Curiouser and curiouser — the two articles below have been pulled by the STrib, but not quick enough to prevent posting here, and tradingcharts.com and istockAnalyst:

news.tradingcharts.com/futures/1/2/138012521.html

www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/4018919

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Today’s STrib has an article that presents CapX 2020 transmission with a narrow focus on just one little piece of a 600+ mile transmission line:

Mammoth high-voltage line alarms residents

As landowners worry about the $1.7 billion CapX2020 project, officials say expanding the power grid is necessary.

By JENNIFER BJORHUS, Star Tribune

April 10, 2010 – 6:14 PM

Like most people, Eric Johnson never really thought much about transmission lines.

But now that a high-voltage power line threatens to dwarf his Dakota County home, he thinks about it every day.

The inch-thick aluminum and steel cable draped on steel poles some 10 stories high has become a nightly topic for Johnson and his wife, Kristen, who worry about health issues and raising their three young children so close to the 345-kilovolt line. They fear it will force them to abandon their home — and their life savings.

“This is all we have,” said Eric, a grounds maintenance contractor.

The Johnsons are among thousands of Minnesotans in the path of CapX2020, one of the most ambitious expansions of Minnesota’s transmission grid ever. The $1.7 billion project will add 700 miles of overhead wires capable of moving 4,500 megawatts of electricity, expanding the grid by about 30 percent. Work is to begin later this year.

State energy officials and utility regulators say the expansion is necessary. An increasingly wired population and growth in areas such as St. Cloud and Rochester have created bottlenecks they fear will only worsen as the economy recovers.

Even so, opposition from those in the path of CapX2020 has grown. While the knitting together of the nation’s Balkanized grid may be an inevitability, CapX2020 offers a sneak preview of the painful ground-level realities. Wires will cross people’s yards and farmland. They make noise and affect property values. The higher voltages needed to move power long distances raise safety questions for those living near them.

“Would you feel comfortable living under lines like that?” asked Percy Scherbenske, a Thoroughbred horse breeder in Hampton who’s worried that the CapX2020 line that could run past his barn would put him out of business.

How much success they’ll have fighting the utilities remains uncertain. State lawmakers are working on legislation to hold utilities to a higher standard — the same as governments — when it comes to taking private land for projects.

Alfred Marcus, a management professor at the University of Minnesota, said Minnesota, and the nation, needs a new way to help utilities and landowners negotiate impasses or stalemates could stifle economic progress.

“There’s an institutional void around this issue,” Marcus said. “Nobody has the incentive to say come, on, let’s sit down.”

Remembering Bolt Weevils

Many Minnesotans remember the last era of big transmission investments. The late 1970s were marked by violent protests over the line from the lignite coal fields of North Dakota to the Twin Cities.

Activists smeared themselves with manure. An anonymous group, calling themselves the “Bolt Weevils,” reportedly shot out nearly 10,000 insulators and toppled 14 towers. A young professor at Carleton College, Paul Wellstone, co-authored a book about it: “Powerline: The First Battle of America’s Energy War.”

Utilities now go through a more rigorous approval process with regulators. CapX2020 has tried to route the lines down existing roads and field lines instead of cutting directly across them. Still, battles continue.

From his office high in the former World Trade Center in downtown St. Paul, Bob Johnson spends his days handling investment funds in commercial real estate. He’s an unlikely power line activist, but he and his wife, Patricia, have backed a costly campaign — they won’t say how much, but estimates are close to six figures — against the CapX project. One leg of CapX would run past their hilltop home along a country road called 220th Street East outside Hampton.

The 240-mile line from Brookings, S.D., to Hampton won’t jeopardize their views or land, the Johnsons say, but they think 220th Street East is a lousy choice because it affects a disproportionate number of people and businesses, including one of the country’s largest Cambodian Buddhist temples and Scherbenkse, the horse breeder.

They’ve proposed an alternate route about a mile north that would mostly cross farmland. The farmers there don’t want the power line, either.

To bolster his case, Johnson flew in experts to testify at a December hearing; among them was David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany in New York. Carpenter testified that there’s a link between exposure to magnetic fields above 4 milligauss and increased risk of cancer, particularly childhood leukemia.

Someone standing 100 feet away from a 345-kilovolt line would be exposed to a calculated average of 3.4 to 12.5 milligauss, depending on the exact spot and whether one or two circuits are operating.

Utilities brought in their own experts, arguing that the health risks from power lines are hypothetical. The average Sonicare toothbrush generates magnetic fields of some 240 milligauss, they argue, while acknowledging people don’t live with a toothbrush in their mouths.

Dropping demand

The Brookings line isn’t the only leg of the CapX under fire. Dropping energy demand has a trio of citizen groups, including a group of south metro landowners called the Citizens Energy Task Force, asking the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to re-examine the need for the line from Hampton to La Crosse, Wis., which would cross the Mississippi through a national wildlife refuge.

When the utilities pitched CapX to regulators in 2005, they projected energy demand in Minnesota and neighboring states would grow about 2.49 percent a year through 2020, or by about 6,300 megawatts total, according to the group’s appeal filed in October with the State Court of Appeals.

Since the recession, demand has been dropping, and CapX utilities have cut individual forecasts. Great River Energy is now planning for a 1.28 percent annual growth rate through 2020. The CapX group as a whole, however, hasn’t revised its official demand forecast.

The Citizens Energy Task Force thinks they should.

“The utilities are asking for a very big, very expensive network that’s more disruptive than it needs to be,” said the group’s attorney, Paula Maccabee.

The utilities argue that electricity demand will inevitably rebound. Both the PUC and an administrative law judge have agreed that new lines are needed, they said.

A hearing on the issue was held at the court of appeals last month. A decision is pending.

A fair price

How much landowners will be compensated remains unclear. Under eminent domain, utilities can lawfully seize and condemn private land for their projects — at a fair price — but they try to settle with landowners first, getting them to sign an easement agreement and take a check.

Most landowners sign such agreements fairly quickly, something Xcel Energy and Great River Energy point to as evidence that they deal fairly with landowners.

Tracking the private offers is difficult. Lawyers who’ve worked with property owners say utilities frequently squeeze landowners, lowballing them on initial offers or not including the impact the power line has on their property value.

“It’s a David and Goliath battle, only it’s David without a rock and a sling,” said Bryan Voight, one of eight homeowners in Dakota County that battled Great River Energy over a new power line a few years ago and won. The utility initially offered him $250 to $500 for running a line across his front yard. The group eventually settled for amounts far higher.

Craig Poorker, a land rights manager with Great River Energy and CapX, said that the utility does not include the impact on property values in easement offers. He called the Voight situation an “anomaly.”

Trying to ensure landowners are treated fairly as CapX looms, Minnesota lawmakers are seeking to tighten eminent domain laws as they apply to utilities. Among other things, they want utilities to pay attorneys fees for landowners who were lowballed. Voight said he paid one-third of his award to his attorney.

In Hampton, Eric and Kristen Johnson say they just want to be treated fairly, too. A decision on the basic route of the Brookings power line is expected by summer. The line could end up 300 to 500 feet away from their house, Poorker said. The Johnsons said the jog away from their house might even be worse, because then the utilities might not have to compensate them at all.

“It’s still too close,” said Kristen Johnson. “We’re talking 150-foot towers that make lots of noise.”

For now, they wait.

“We’re just kind of sitting here in limbo,” said Kristen. “It’s scary.”

Jennifer Bjorhus • 612-673-4683

Not only is the focus so narrow, but NoCapX 2020 and United Citizens Action Network don’t exist… sigh…

And the point of the eminent domain law is misstated:

State lawmakers are working on legislation to hold utilities to a higher standard — the same as governments — when it comes to taking private land for projects.

and:

Trying to ensure landowners are treated fairly as CapX looms, Minnesota lawmakers are seeking to tighten eminent domain laws as they apply to utilities.

Ummmmmm… the point of the legislative changes isn’t “to hold utilities to a higher standard” or to “tighten eminent domain laws as they apply to utilities,” it’s to require utilities to follow the same laws as every other entity with eminent domain, to not receive favored treatment — EXEMPTION — from eminent domain laws.  GRRRRRRRRRR…

And nothing at all about the people in Marshall who fought so hard to get a Citizen Advisory Task Force and were dissed by Minnesota Office of Energy Security:

MOES answers Marshall malfeasance/misfeasance charges

And there’s another one too:

Minneapolis Star Tribune 4/9/10

POWERING UP: Wiring the state for the next generation

Blueprints for thousands of miles of new power lines to carry wind are sparking debate over the nation’s clean energy future.

By JENNIFER BJORHUS, Star Tribune

April 9, 2010 – 5:59 PM

Minnesota, beset by an aging and overused power grid, is losing its edge in the wind industry just as the rest of the country is ready to embrace it.

But if President Obama and some of the country’s largest wind developers have their way, the state’s gusts could someday soon help power homes in Chicago and further east.

Developers are still drawing up blueprints, with multibillion pricetags, that crisscross Minnesota with networks of gigantic transmission lines to ship wind power east. President Obama spurred the planning, making the electric superhighway — the energy equivalent of the country’s interstate highways — a key plank of his clean energy agenda. Recently, governors of 29 states, including Gov. Tim Pawlenty, pushed Congress to pass a national renewable energy standard requiring 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources, largely wind, by 2020.

Huge power line plans, however, have sparked sharp debate over who controls the nation’s energy future. Like the paths of the wires themselves, battle lines are still being drawn. Environmentalists are grudgingly embracing some of the green plans despite all the development they entail, citing the urgency of shifting from dirty coal-fired electricity. Minnesota companies that stand to benefit are pushing for the potentially large export crop. But a national group of utilities, many from the East, came out this month saying they don’t want Midwest wind, preferring to encourage local development.

Some Minnesotans agree. The state should meet its own renewable energy goals — 25 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2025 — not by exporting wind but harvesting it for its own use with smaller lines, they argue.

Ratepayers inevitably will get socked with bills lasting decades for building new transmission lines, but no one can agree on how to fairly spread out the costs.

Despite sky-scraping pricetags on the backs of taxpayers and ratepayers, debates over the large-scale transmission buildouts around the country remain largely invisible to the general public, said Bruce Edelston, who heads the newly formed Coalition for Fair Transmission Policy in Washington, D.C.

“It’s probably the biggest issue out there that the average person on the street has no idea of,” Edelston said.

To see the state’s power stalemate firsthand, look no further than the St. Paul control room that manages the electric grid. Staring at a bank of computers beneath a 12-foot-high screen of blinking lights, a dispatcher will see that the lines are getting jammed and order a wind farm operator to turn off turbines.

Last year dispatchers ordered farms in Minnesota and nearby states to “dump wind” 6,000 times, according to the Midwest Independent System Operator (Midwest ISO), which runs the million-square-mile electrical grid over 13 states, including Minnesota, plus the province of Manitoba.

The calls come when it’s windiest. There just aren’t enough power lines, said Clair Moeller, the group’s vice president of transmission management.

And it has ambitious wind developers up in arms.

“We’re literally feathering our blades … while others continue to generate with coal,” says Don Furman, an executive at Iberdrola Renewables Inc., the U.S. arm of the Spanish wind giant that owns several farms in Minnesota. “Where we are right now is pretty contrary to where the administration and most of the public wants to be going.”

Minnesota has about 150 wind projects waiting in line at the Midwest ISO to plug into the grid. Some have waited since 2005.

Meanwhile the state’s status as a wind energy leader is languishing. As recently as 2007, Minnesota was the country’s third-largest wind producer. By last year it had fallen to fifth. Last year 20 states each added more than 100 megawatts of new wind power. Minnesota added just 56. In each of the two previous years, the state had added more than 400 megawatts of new power.

Meanwhile, Minnesota imports nearly a quarter of its electricity, putting it near the top in the country.

There are so many stalled wind projects in Minnesota that if they were all hooked up, the state could probably triple its renewable energy goal of 25 percent. The state appears to be on track to hit the 2010 target of 15 percent for Xcel Energy and 7 percent for all other electric utilities.

Renewable Energy Systems is waiting to hook up three projects, said Joe DeVito, who works in the Colorado company’s Minneapolis office.

“It’s a been a slow and painful process,” DeVito said. “I just don’t think we’re going to take any more positions in this region because of the difficulty of the queue.”

DeVito said his company will likely build in Oregon or Colorado instead.

The state’s energy regulator, the Public Utilities Commission, and its top utilities argue that Minnesota has simply maxed out the spiderweb of power lines hanging over the state. It hasn’t expanded its grid significantly in nearly 30 years.

At peak times, lines jam around St. Cloud, Alexandria, Rochester and La Crosse, Wis., raising the threat of outages and leaving the system vulnerable to a bad storm.

“The existing system capacity is essentially used up,” said Priti Patel, director of regional transmission development at Minneapolis-based Excel Energy, and a co-director of CapX2020, the state’s major power line expansion that’s been years in the planning.

The first phase of CapX2020, expected to break ground later this year, would add about 700 miles of high-voltage lines across Minnesota and part of Wisconsin at a cost of about $1.7 billion. The second phase is undetermined. Among other things, utility officials wait to see whether there’s an export market.

Big plans, big costs

Last October at a solar facility in Florida, Obama stumped for a clean energy superhighway in which “a wind farm in rural South Dakota can power homes in Chicago.”

Three plans do just that. At the moment, the $12 billion Green Power Express is furthest along. It would be a 3,000-mile network of 765-kilovolt lines across the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. It’s backed by ITC Holdings Corp., a publicly traded transmission company in Novi, Mich. Federal regulators boosted the project last year when they granted it a guaranteed 12.38 percent return on investment.

To DeVito, even that project isn’t big enough. “The need is actually larger if we want to really tap renewable energy.”

American Electric Power in Columbus, Ohio, and MidAmerican Energy Holdings in Des Moines, Iowa, are pushing another electric superhighway that would cross Minnesota. A study is due out in April.

And the Midwest ISO itself just proposed several different configurations of high-voltage lines stretching from the Dakotas to Illinois to meet mandates for renewable energy. The pricetag: between $12 billion and $22 billion.

Any of the proposed lines crossing Minnesota would be subject to approval by state regulators.

But who pays? The Midwest ISO recently announced it’s devised a method for sharing transmission costs between power generators hooking up to new lines and ratepayers throughout its far-flung grid based on a formula for their power use. It’s still hammering out details.

“We’re watching it like a hawk,” said Peter Fox-Penner, principal at the Brattle Group, an economic consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. Spreading the cost is “without any question, the biggest bottleneck in this acceleration.”

Go it alone

Not everyone is sold on electric superhighways. The governors of several Northeast states and a growing number of utilities are pushing back on plans to import cheap Midwest wind power, concerned it will squelch local development.

“It skews the market toward the remote resources,” said Edelston, who heads the utility opposition.

Others argue the entire interstate transmission concept is wrong. David Morris, a vice president at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, says Minnesotans “may be forced to pay billions to build almost 2,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines that will benefit Minnesota little, if at all,” he said.

His group thinks Minnesota’s energy future should focus not on big wires to haul power long distances, but on small ones supporting grass-roots projects. He points to countries such as Denmark and Germany where small renewable energy projects have taken a significant bite out of overall use. Wind generates about 20 percent of Denmark’s electricity, the bulk of it owned by farmers and cooperatives.

Green town

Some 20 stories high, the sleek white machine on the edge of Mountain Lake towers over a gas station and the town’s golf course.

The single turbine, built about three years ago, generates about 16 percent of the electricity used by this town of about 2,000 people in southwestern Minnesota.

Besides trying to be green, one goal was to control swings in electricity prices — avoiding so-called spot market purchases, said City Administrator Wendy Meyer. Its wind power has a cost slightly less than the average of the town’s total electricity mix, which includes electricity from Nebraska. But wind prices won’t change, while electricity from other sources will inevitably increase.

“It’s a huge futures contract,” said wind developer Dan Juhl, who helped the town build it at a cost of $2 million.

Meyer said her town won’t ever become completely energy self-sufficient. Wind is famously intermittent. “You can’t put up 100 percent wind turbines,” she said. “You still need something.”

Indeed, Beth Goodpaster, a staff attorney at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, said to wean the nation from coal requires approaches from all angles, one reason her group offered reluctant support for CapX2020. “We think we do need to do it all.”

Jennifer Bjorhus • 612-673-4683