The Minneapolis-based utility soon will dole out $23 million for alternative-energy projects that could bear fruit -- or lay eggs. Since 1999, the innovation program -- created by the Legislature -- has awarded nearly $53 million, and gotten a decidedly mixed basket of results.
A fruit: A wind turbine in Pipestone that delivers the local school district enough money to pay for a teaching position. An egg: An experiment that found removing tars and bits of pollution from gases is harder than it looks.
"Sometimes you just have to try something and find that doesn't work, so I'll take a different path," said Debra Paulson, Xcel's manager of regulatory administration.
So far, nine of 48 projects have been canceled or withdrawn. Some may take five to 10 years to show clear results.
A seven-member panel is sifting through more than 100 requests for money in the latest round of grants. The panel includes representatives of Xcel, consumers, ratepayers, industry and residents of Prairie Island. The money that funds the program is collected from Xcel ratepayers.
Nuclear waste led to program
Its genesis came in 1994 during a debate over what to do about spent fuel at Xcel's Prairie Island nuclear plant near Red Wing. The Legislature wanted to spur research and development in renewable energy to reduce the state's dependence on nuclear power and other conventional sources of energy.
While Xcel has yet to make public the details of pending applications, past grants have financed a variety of renewable energy projects.
WindLogics, a St. Paul company that tracks and forecasts wind patterns for utilities and other clients, was granted nearly $1 million in 2003 to design a computer model -- and install monitoring equipment -- to more accurately assess which way the wind is blowing, as well as how fast and for how long.
As a result, utilities can now orchestrate which generators run -- or are kept idle -- with better warning of how much electricity to expect from the wind turbines that dot Minnesota.
"To the extent they can get a better forecast, they can then arrange the schedule of their other operating plants, whether coal or gas or nuclear," said Mark Ahlstrom, WindLogics chief executive.
WindLogics is publishing results of the research, which is still underway, in an effort to see that the technology spreads beyond Minnesota's borders.
"I think we're producing a working system and technical advancements that are advancing the state of the art," Ahlstrom said.
Research and production
Half the grants disbursed by Xcel go to research projects and the rest go to projects that produce renewable energy.
A $100,000 grant helped the Science Museum of Minnesota build a solar-powered "zero energy building" -- one that produces at least as much energy as it uses -- as part of its outdoor science park in St. Paul.
A $753,000 check gave the Pipestone Area School District most of the cash for a 750-kilowatt wind turbine. The district gets about $45,000 a year by selling the power to operators of a nearby electrical grid.
"It means we can keep a teacher," said Jim Lentz, school superintendent.
Sometimes bright ideas end in clear setbacks.
The program approved a $639,000 grant for studying whether a filter, using centrifugal force, could be devised for removing tars and other impurities from gases obtained from "biomass" -- a broad category that covers everything from waste rotting in fields to garbage decaying in landfills. The gases can be used to power electrical generators.
But a report on the project found plenty of problems, from leaking gases to particles remaining stuck in filters to a lower-than-expected capacity with the filtering equipment. The experiments were conducted by Hopkins-based MagStar Technologies and Community Power Corp. in Littleton, Colo.
They concluded the process "will not be a practical means of cleaning producer gas streams in the near future."
Another disappointment
A $739,000 grant to Roseville-based Sebesta Blomberg, an energy management and design firm, also ended in disappointment.
The company found that the technology to extract gas from distiller's grains and byproducts at an ethanol plant could feed an electrical generator to sustain the power demands of an ethanol plant.
But it also found a problem: The grains and byproducts had a higher value if sold as animal feed and the technology to extract gas was costly.
The return "wasn't worth the investment to produce your own power," said John Carlson, a principal at Sebesta Blomberg. But, in his view, the study was worth the effort. Some of the technology has proven useful in later company projects, he said.
Many of the results, according to Xcel's Paulson, will end up in peer-reviewed technical journals, to be read by researchers across the nation and around the globe.
The latest proposed projects must survive a gantlet of reviews by technical experts and budget specialists. By October, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will have the final say on what projects go forward.
"What we all eventually get out of this is technology that will be environmentally friendly, creative and useful," Paulson said.
And, in some cases, tips on ideas that don't work.
