Regional Industry & News

WORTHINGTON — Representatives of PowerOn Midwest Randy Fordice (with Xcel Energy) and Rod Pritchard (at ITC Midwest) addressed Nobles County commissioner concerns about a series of proposed 765-kilovolt (kV) transmission projects connecting eastern South Dakota and southern Minnesota during the board's Tuesday morning meeting.

“I really want to express appreciation to the board and your constituents for being as engaged as you are,” Fordice began, adding that community engagement is important.

Three rounds of open houses have taken place thus far, with one last November and two over the summer, to explain the need for the project, the state’s regulatory process and route development.

“These projects will deliver long-term electric reliability for Minnesota, the Upper Midwest and Nobles County,” Fordice said. “And when we talk about long-term reliability, that's over years and decades, not weeks and months. We are required to look 10- to 15- to 20-plus years out and identify what our system is going to need to make sure we can deliver reliable electricity at all times of day, at all times of year regardless of the weather.”

According to Fordice, estimates show the state and region are going to experience about a 1% to 2% annual growth rate over that 15- to 20-year planning period. That growth will come from increased population, commercial and economic development, factories, advanced manufacturing and potentially growth in data centers.

“That’s simply more than the current grid can reliably deliver,” Fordice said, adding that other utilities in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region determined PowerOn Midwest was needed to deliver on the requirement of distributing electricity at all times of the year.

Yet energy generation is going to significantly change in the coming decades as aging power plants built in the 1970s and ‘80s retire and different types of generation are built. Fordice said they see a lot more smaller distributed generation, whether that’s renewables, natural gas, battery and storage systems instead of large baseload central-station coal-fired power plants.

Fordice then addressed data centers.

“The projects are not being proposed to serve any one individual data center,” he said. “Some of these hyper scale projects that you’re hearing about are not included in the electric projections that demonstrated the need for the new 765-kV project.”

Fordice also said the city of Worthington receives its electricity in part from Missouri River Energy Services, a MISO member. They would get electricity from these projects to serve their customers.

Nobles County specifically imports electricity from outside the county about 21% of the year, Fordice said. So 79% of the year, enough electricity is generated within the county to power the county’s needs.

“MISO estimates that Nobles County's load is going to grow from 340 gigawatt hours a year to 440 gigawatt hours a year, so that’s an increase of nearly 30%,” Fordice said. “Our analysis of property taxes shows that each mile of the PowerOn Midwest transmission line projects will pay about $30,000 a year in property taxes.”

Answering questions Nobles County Administrator Bruce Heitkamp had sent on behalf of commissioners prior to the meeting, Fordice said they don’t expect any impacts on livestock from the transmission line. For concerns on stray voltage, landowners can request pre- and post-testing in areas.

“Often stray voltage is caused by an issue either on the distribution system or wiring on the farm itself and we can identify that and work with co-ops or landowners to get those issues corrected,” he said.

A county question on establishing a setback of 500 feet from livestock structures is not something the utilities support, “but if the county or landowners want to recommend this to the (Minnesota) Public Utilities Commission (PUC) as part of the route permit, it’s well within your purview to do so,” Fordice said.

It was also clarified that there would be no impacts to those with hearing devices or pacemakers.

“There’s a study from the National Institute of Health saying there wouldn’t be any issue (for hearing devices),” Fordice said. “Potentially some static related to induced current directly under the line, but if you’re outside the right of way, there wouldn’t be any issues at all.”

For pacemakers and defibrillators, anything designed and manufactured after the mid-1990s uses a bipolar configuration within the device, and shouldn’t have any issues with the transmission line, Fordice said.

“There’s a study in Finland that took people wearing pacemakers under various types of transmission lines. (They) were never able to detect any issues with the pacemaker not functioning properly,” he said. “The only way that they were able to get any sort of reaction from a pacemaker was to disengage one of the nodes so it's operating in a unipolar configuration and just bombard it with so much induced current that it doesn't exist under transmission lines that would be less than 1,000 kilovolts. So they had to really try to have any sort of manipulation of a device.”

After a question from Commissioner Justin Ahlers of where to find those studies, Fordice said they refer to the American Cancer Society, World Health Organization and others on the PowerOn Midwest website .

Fordice then distinguished the difference between frequency levels of electric and magnetic fields, first stating they exist everywhere in anything that produces electricity, such as kitchen appliances and computer screens.

“The frequency level of electric and magnetic fields are so low that they can't manipulate cell structures within a biological body, humans, mice, anything,” he said. “For example, it's not like a UV ray or an X-ray that you need protection from. … Those are high frequency fields that can manipulate cells. Electric and magnetic fields are at such a low level they can't manipulate biological tissue.”

Commissioner Gene Metz asked if MISO looked into other scenarios, such as a smaller electric line.

According to Fordice, lower voltage lines, like 345-kV, would be about five times more expensive than the current proposed project — which is already in the range of $3 to $4 billion.

Board Chairman Chris Dybevick questioned compensation for the land the project would take from landowners. Fordice said it’s based on current market values. There’s additional compensation for how many structures may be on a property, access, crop damages, extending over a couple of years while the ground returns to full production.

The project needs two permits: the certificate of need (CON) and route permit.

The CON is currently under review and public hearings overseen by an administrative law judge are expected in early November. The route permit application is being developed.

“We got a tremendous amount of feedback at both of those June and August open houses,” Fordice said. “We’re making revisions to what we termed our primary route in August based on the feedback that we got.”

It is expected the route permit application will be filed in February.

The project is in the hands of the PUC — not the county.

“The commission takes local government input really seriously in my experience,” Fordice said. “When they get information from counties, cities, townships, they take a good hard look.”

Fordice encouraged anyone to share feedback with the PUC at their website: mn.gov/puc/ . For specific comments related to the certificate of need, include the docket number 25-117 in any comments. Pritchard said there will be different dockets for the routes, which will open up in the next few months.

While Tuesday's discussion was not a public hearing, a misunderstanding allowed township officials to speak at the meeting following PowerOn Midwest’s presentation. Shelly Onken and Nan Henning shared concerns on behalf of Bloom Township; Andrew Dierks spoke for Elk Town