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Stephanie Hemphill
St. Paul, Minn.

Report: Minn. electrical grid needs upgrades

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A report from the state Office of Energy Security says Minnesota needs to fix weaknesses in the electrical grid in order to bring more wind power on line.

Minnesota has far more wind potential than what's needed to reach the state goal of 25 percent renewable power, but the grid is not ready to carry it.

George Crocker from the North American Water Office says a lot of small-scale projects could go on line without expensive work on the grid.

"We could systematically put ourselves on a program right now using the infrastructure that's in place to do many hundreds of dispersed generation, in the range of 2, 5, 10, 20 megawatts, each strategically located, strategically sized so that the existing infrastructure can absorb that energy and deliver it to load," Crocker said.

DFL State Sen. Ellen Anderson said changes at the federal level could help.

"We heard about the possibility of a federal renewable energy standard like our Minnesota one, and if that were to pass, then states like ours that have enormous amounts of wind could soon be sending wind across the country," Anderson said. "And there [are] enough projects in line already, if we could get the transmission built to do that."

The federal government is also working on new ways to allocate the cost of new transmission lines more fairly among wind farms and customers.