An Onamia School District bus driver is being hailed as a hero for dodging a head-on crash with a semitrailer truck and saving many lives, reported Star Tribune.
The incident reportedly occurred on Feb. 5 around 7:15 a.m. in central Minnesota, when a semitrailer truck crossed into the oncoming lane, where the school bus was. The bus driver, identified as 52-year-old Brian Lathrop, was seen via video making a quick maneuver to avoid a complete head-on crash.
Mille Lacs County Sheriff Kyle Burton said the quick maneuver undoubtedly saved many lives. The semi made a “glancing sideswipe” near the bus’s rear passenger side instead of a full head-on crash thanks to the bus driver’s quick actions.
The trucker, 54-year-old David Garrett, told local news reporters that he was under the impression that he hit black ice before losing control of his vehicle. He confirmed this was the first time anything like this incident had happened to him in his 10 years of truck driving.
Onamia Superintendent Jason Vold said via the article that along with the driver, there were three paraprofessionals and four students on board the bus at the time of the incident. Two students among the eight people on board were evaluated for minor injuries.
Vold said the district will be recognizing Lathrop for his heroic actions at the next school board meeting.
A long-running local government collaboration in southwestern Minnesota is helping to insulate the region from the kind of controversies and misinformation that have plagued rural clean energy projects in other states.
The Rural Minnesota Energy Board has its origins in a regional task force that was set up during the mid-1990s as the state’s first wind farms were being built. The task force was instrumental in persuading state legislators in 2002 to create a wind energy production tax, which today generates millions of dollars in annual revenue for counties and townships that host wind projects.
The group’s scope and membership has since gradually expanded to include 18 rural counties that pay monthly dues for support on energy policy and permitting. The board represents members at the state legislature and in Public Utilities Commission proceedings. At home, it facilitates community meetings with project developers, helps draft energy-related ordinances, and educates members and the public on the benefits of energy projects.
The result, say clean energy advocates and developers, has been a uniquely consistent approach to local energy policy and permitting that makes it easier for renewable companies to do business in the region.
“The rural energy board has been a critical, important body and one of the major reasons why renewable energy has been successful in southwestern Minnesota,” said Adam Sokolski, director of regulatory and legislative affairs at EDF Renewables North America. “Their policies have encouraged good decision-making over the years and led to a stable and productive region for energy development.”
EDF Renewables has worked with the board on at least nine projects in the region. Sokolski said he’s come to admire its approach to policy making, its support for transmission projects, and its efforts to educate members on clean energy.
“It’s positive to have county leaders talking to each other about energy projects, about how … they can approach those projects so they best benefit their constituents and the public,” he said.
Southwest Minnesota has the state’s densest concentration of wind turbines and is increasingly attracting solar developers, too. Wind turbines account for more than 4,500 megawatts, or around 22%, of the state’s generation capacity, making Minnesota a top 10 state for wind production.
‘It’s all economic development’
The board counts the wind production tax among its most significant accomplishments. Large wind farms pay $1.20 per megawatt-hour of generation. Counties receive 80% of the revenue, with the remainder going to townships. A similar fee also exists for large solar projects.
The fee delivers millions of dollars annually, allowing local governments to construct buildings and repair bridges and roads without raising their levies for years. According to American Clean Power, Minnesota municipalities receive $44 million annually in taxes, and private landowners receive nearly $41 million in lease payments from wind and solar companies.
That has enabled counties to stave off opposition by pointing out that turbines and solar are economic development, according to Jason Walker, community development director for the Southwest Regional Development Commission, which manages the board, said the local government revenue generated from wind and solar projects has helped reduce opposition to projects.
“It’s all economic development here,” Walker said.
When opposition does emerge, such as around a recent 160 megawatt solar project in Rock County in the state’s far southwest corner, the board works with commissioners to make sure local leaders have factual information as opposed to misinformation.
Peder Mewis, regional policy director for the Clean Grid Alliance, praised the board for creating an information-sharing culture among members that helps prepare them for clean energy development. He said many developers appreciate that the region’s ordinances are similar because of the board, and that they have maintained good relationships with members over the years.
“There are other parts of the state that are thinking, ‘Is there something here that we could replicate or duplicate?’” Mewis said.
Jay Trusty, executive director of the Southwest Regional Development Commission, said the board plays an essential role in lobbying for state policy to support clean energy development. In addition to the production taxes, the board regularly defends the local distribution of those funds when lawmakers consider other uses for the revenue. The board more recently lobbied for changes to the state transmission permitting process, which were approved this year, and it supported an expansion for Xcel Energy’s CapX 2020 high-voltage transmission project before state utility regulators.
Minnesota Public Utilities Commissioner John Tuma recalled the board’s support for the state’s 2008 renewable energy standard, which gave Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty important rural support for signing the legislation.
“They bring an economic voice to the table,” Tuma said, adding that the board continues to be active in conversations about regional grid policies.
Nobles County Commissioner Gene Metz has served on the board for 12 years. The region’s decades of experience and collaboration on wind energy has helped make residents more comfortable with clean energy projects, he said, leading to fewer controversies.
In counties outside the board’s territory, “they’re getting more pushback, especially on solar projects,” he said.
Gene’s cousin, Chad Metz, serves as a commissioner in Traverse County, which is not a member and has a mortarium on clean energy projects. Chad Metz sees clean energy as inevitable and wants the county to join the rural energy board to protect its economic interests. “The benefits outweigh the negatives, and it will just become part of life,” he said.
A 19-year-old woman from Minnesota is facing dozens of charges in connection with school bus crash that sent 12 students to the hospital, reported CBS News.
The incident reportedly occurred on Sept. 12, when a school bus transporting 22 students to Cherry School in Iron, was hit by a vehicle that blew a stop sign at Townline Road and County Road 5. The driver of the vehicle was identified as 19-year-old Svea Snickers.
Snickers reportedly drove through intersection, hit the bus, and caused it to roll into a ditch. The driver of the bus, who was not identified, told local news reporters he knew immediately it would be a bad crash but did not have time to respond in any meaningful way to avoid the collision.
The bus driver, 12 students and Snickers were reportedly hospitalized amid the crash. Nine other students were injured but did not need to be hospitalized. The student injuries ranged from lacerations and abrasions to concussions, contusions, fractures and more.
Authorities confirmed that while searching Snickers’ phone, investigators found she had used it while driving about two minutes before officers responded to the crash and just seconds before a 911 call was initiated. Investigators also learned the car was reportedly going between 48 and 53 mph just before the crash and Sickers did not brake before impact.
As of Dec. 26, Snickers is reportedly charged with five felony counts of criminal vehicular operations, 17 gross misdemeanors count of the same and two misdemeanor traffic offenses. The investigation remains ongoing.
Amid a surge in utility shutoffs, and in the face of a groundbreaking study finding racial disparities in those outcomes, Minnesota’s largest utility is taking a closer look at the issue.
In a November agreement with consumer groups and the state’s Public Utilities Commission, Xcel Energy has outlined a series of steps to provide more information to customers and make it easier for them to restore service.
Xcel also agreed to hire an outside consultant to conduct a one-year study of disparity issues related to disconnections and outages and, separately, do its own analysis of outages. The move came in response to a University of Minnesota study released earlier this year that found that people of color were more likely than White households to have their service disconnected for falling behind on bills, even when controlling for income and home ownership status.
The agreement falls short of a demand from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office for Xcel to institute a temporary moratorium on shutoffs until racial disparities are addressed, based on a recommendation from Fresh Energy and a coalition formed by Cooperative Energy Futures, Environmental Law & Policy Center, Sierra Club, and Vote Solar.
Erica McConnell, staff attorney for the Environmental Law & Policy Center, represented the clean energy organizations advocating for grid equity. She supported the agreement but believes it will do little to help reduce disparities in shutoffs.
“These are very important improvements that don’t really address — and the commission didn’t discuss — the disparate impacts and the racial disparity (of disconnections) and how to address that specifically,” she said.
A temporary moratorium on disconnections would have allowed for time to study disparities and find ways to address them.
“The commission didn’t talk about that,” McConnell said. “They didn’t address it at all, so that was disappointing. I understand it’s uncomfortable and it’s a tough issue, but it’s disappointing they shied away taking it head on.”
Shutoffs soaring
Beyond the challenge of disparities, Xcel’s number of service disconnections has skyrocketed. More than 45,000 Xcel customers saw their power shut off this year, a number that has grown significantly over the last two decades.
Xcel agreed to many proposals from the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota, the Energy CENTS Coalition, clean energy organizations and the Public Utilities Commission to create more consumer protection against shutoffs.
Xcel Energy’s involuntary disconnection notices began rising significantly in 2023 before skyrocketing in 2024, when shutoffs doubled the prior year’s total for May through July. Despite Minnesota’s cold weather protection rules that limit disconnections during the winter through April 30, shutoffs even grew during the winter months.
This chart, based on Xcel Energy data and submitted by consumer and clean energy groups to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, shows a sharp increase in utility shutoffs in 2023 and 2024, which the groups attribute to the utility’s new ability to use smart meters to disconnect customers remotely. Credit: Minnesota PUC Docket E002/M-24-27
Clean energy and consumer organizations point to Xcel’s ability to remotely disconnect customers who have smart meters as a major reason for the shutoffs, along with inflation, escalating rate increases and challenging repayment requirements. Xcel had demanded customers pay 50% of what they owe to reconnect, which may have violated Minnesota law, according to the Citizens Utility Board.
Xcel’s pact with the Citizens Utility Board and Energy CENTS “is going to make payment agreements more affordable and hopefully help households that are behind on their bills avoid getting shut off and get caught back up,” said Annie Levenson-Falk, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota.
The utility board and Energy CENTS Coalition forged the agreement with Xcel under the purview of the Public Utilities Commission, which will issue a final order later. The agreement requires the following:
Customers will pay 10% of what they owe to have the power turned back on, instead of 50%.
The amount due will have to be at least $180 before Xcel can send a disconnect notice.
Xcel cannot shut off power until a customer reaches a $300 past due balance. Xcel’s data from this year showed disconnected customers were $441 in arrears on average in October and much higher in other months.
The utility must wait at least 10 days after a shutoff notice has been sent to disconnect, up from five days.
Xcel must post clear disconnection and payment policies on its website, along with information about customers’ right to develop an affordable repayment plan. Any changes Xcel makes to shutoff policies and repayments have to be reported to the commission, and it must collect data on repayments and customer agreements.
A variance allowing remote disconnections without field visits from Xcel remains, but the utility must contact customers via voicemail and use at least one other form of electronic communication.
Xcel spokesperson Kevin Coss said the utility believes “this agreement is a great step toward reducing disconnections for some of our customers who continue to struggle economically.”
Options for customers
George Shardlow, Energy CENTS executive director, said he thought a clearer explanation of the disconnection process on Xcel’s website brings a transparency that had been lacking.
“I don’t think the average person even knows that they have a right to negotiate when they’re struggling to pay their bills,” he said. “It’s all sort of opaque. We’re excited to see better documentation of people’s rights on Xcel’s website.”
Minnesota law says utility customers are “entitled” to a payment plan they can afford, Shardlow said. Customers who cannot afford the 10% down payment can still negotiate for a settlement that fits their budget, he added.
Shutoffs have been growing. This year Xcel sent disconnection notices to 51,000 customers in January and 71,000 in July. But not all notices result in shutoffs. The highest month for disconnections, May, saw more than 10,000 shutoffs. By August, slightly more than 8,400 customers had been disconnected.
Coss said Xcel works with customers to avoid disconnection by starting a nine-week process of contacting them through multiple channels to “point them to available options for energy assistance — both through the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and our own affordability programs — and offer flexible payment plans tailored to their circumstances.”
Minnesota also has cold weather protections that greatly reduce utilities’ ability to disconnect customers in winter months. But people who fail to pay their bills in winter see their balances grow, leading to higher disconnections in summer when they fail to catch up.
Xcel agreed to monitor progress and collect more data on racial disparities involving customers involuntarily shut off. The utility has already hired a third party evaluator, as the agreement requires, to study its shutoff policies and hold stakeholder engagement meetings during the year-long process.
Coss said disparities result in inequities throughout society and Xcel has been doing its part to address them. The utility has worked with the study’s authors and advocacy groups to identify actions to reduce disparities, he said.
Earlier this year, the commission also approved a proposal by Xcel for a pilot program that will provide bill credits to select census tracts with high levels of disconnections. Coss said Xcel will provide $500 bill credits to customers in low-income census areas who have a greater than $2,000 past-due balance, using money available from a quality of service program.
Minnesota Public Utilities Commissioner Joe Sullivan said he believed the agreement negotiated among the nonprofits and utility would reduce the financial strain on households facing disconnections and assist Xcel in recovering debt.
“I thought that in that docket people came together and were constructive,” he said. “I feel like I’m hopeful that the order will make some progress.”
PUC Chair Katie Sieben said the commission is “always looking at affordability, and especially as it pertains to low-income customers, I think we have a great track record on working with stakeholders and with utilities to provide robust low-income assistance to customers.”
She mentioned the commission’s role in approving an Xcel pilot to decrease payments for low-income, low-usage customers and a September decision that used a penalty for the utility’s service quality underperformance to provide bill credits to around 1,000 customers with the oldest outstanding balances in low-income census tracts.
‘Still more work to do’
The agreement does not solve the problem of low-income customers struggling to pay utility bills. Shardlow said Energy CENTS and the Citizens Utility Board lobbied the state legislature to allow households to apply for energy assistance funding the entire year instead of the current policy of having a deadline of May 31. Only 20% of eligible Minnesota households participate in the program, he said.
Levenson-Falk wants Xcel to consider eliminating the 1.5% late fee it charges customers on their balance, or consider donating the money to affordability programs.
The Citizens Utility Board also wants Xcel to develop a plan to reconnect customers quickly on days of high heat or poor air quality. Coss said Xcel will evaluate reconnecting customers disconnected during days of air quality alerts.
Levenson-Falk said the agreement at least makes progress. “I think we resolved everything that we had discussed with Xcel but that’s not to say that we think this is going to solve the problem, because, of course, there are still going to be continuing shutoffs, and those are still very concerning,” she said. “There’s still more work to do.”
This story was updated to include a statement from Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Chair Katie Sieben.
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A top executive with Minnesota’s largest utility says data center growth will not prevent it from meeting the state’s 100% clean electricity law, but it may extend the life of natural gas power plants into the next decade.
“As we take all of that coal off the system — even if you didn’t add data centers into the mix — I think we may have been looking to extend some gas (contracts) on our system to get us through a portion of the 2030s,” said Ryan Long, president of Xcel Energy’s division serving Minnesota and the Dakotas. “Adding data centers could increase the likelihood of that, to be perfectly honest.”
Long made the comments at a Minnesota Public Utilities Commission conference this fall exploring the potential impact of data centers on the state’s 2040 clean electricity mandate.
The expansion of power-hungry data centers, driven by artificial intelligence, has caused anxiety across the country among utility planners and regulators. The trend is moving the goalposts for states’ clean electricity targets and raising questions about whether clean energy capacity can keep up with demand as society also tries to electrify transportation and building heat.
Minnesota PUC commissioner Joe Sullivan organized last month’s conference in response to multiple new data centers projects, including a $700 million facility by Facebook’s parent company Meta that’s under construction in suburban Rosemount. Microsoft and Amazon have each acquired property near a retiring Xcel coal plant in central Minnesota.
“We need to ensure that our system is able to serve these companies if they come,” Sullivan said, “and that it can serve them with clean resources consistent with state law.”
Alongside concerns about whether clean energy can keep up with new electricity demand, there’s also an emerging view that data centers — if properly regulated — could become grid assets that help accelerate the transition to carbon-free power. Several stakeholders at the Oct. 31 event shared that view, including Xcel’s regional president.
A 100-megawatt data center could generate as much as $64 million in annual revenue for Xcel, enough to help temper rate increases or cover the cost of other projects on the system, Long said. He said the company wants to attract 1.3 gigawatts worth of data centers to its territory by 2032, and it thinks it can absorb all of that demand without harming progress toward its 2040 clean energy requirement.
Long said data center expansion will not change the company’s plans to close all of its remaining coal-fired power plants by 2040, but it may cause them to try to keep gas plans operating longer. Ultimately, meeting the needs of data centers will require more renewable generation, battery storage, and grid-enhancing technology, but rising costs and supply chain issues have slowed deployment of those solutions.
Other utilities echoed that optimism. Julie Pierce, Minnesota Power’s vice president for strategy and planning said the company has experience serving large customers such as mines in northeastern Minnesota and would be ready to serve data centers. Great River Energy’s resource planning director Zachary Ruzycki said the generation and transmission cooperative “has a lot of arrows in its quiver” to accommodate data centers.
Ruzycki noted, too, that much of the interest it has received from data center developers is because of the state’s commitment to clean energy. Many large data center operators have made corporate commitments to power them on 100% carbon-free electricity, whether from renewables or nuclear power.
Pete Wyckoff, deputy commissioner for energy at the Minnesota Department of Commerce, expressed doubts about the ability to meet unchecked demand from data centers. Even with the state’s recent permitting reforms, utilities are unlikely to be able to deliver “power of any sort — much less clean power — in the size and timeframes that data centers are likely to request.”
He sees hydrogen, long-duration batteries, carbon capture, and advanced nuclear among the solutions that will eventually be needed, but in the short-term the grid could serve more data centers with investments in transmission upgrades, virtual power plants, and other demand response programs.
“These solutions can be deployed faster and cheaper than building all new transmission and large clean energy facilities, though we’ll need those, too,” Wyckoff said.
Aaron Tinjum, director of energy policy and regulatory affairs for the Data Center Coalition, said data centers provide the computing power for things like smart meters, demand response, and other grid technologies. The national trade group represents the country’s largest technology and data center companies.
“We can’t simply view data centers as a significant consumer of energy if they’re all helping us become more efficient, and helping us save on our utility bills,” Tinjum said.
He also pointed to data centers’ role in driving clean energy development. A recent report from S&P Global Commodity Insights found that data centers account for half of all U.S. corporate clean energy procurement.
The true impact of data centers on emissions and the grid is complicated, though. Meta, which participated in the recent Minnesota conference, says it matches all of its annual electricity use with renewable energy, but environmental groups say there is evidence that its data centers are increasing fossil fuel use and emissions in the local markets where they are built.
Amelia Vohs, climate program director with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, raised concerns at the conference about whether data center growth will make it harder to electrify transportation and heating. She pointed to neighboring Wisconsin, where utilities are proposing to build new gas plants to power data centers.
“This commission and the stakeholders here today have all done a ton of work and made great progress in decarbonizing the electric sector in our state,” Vohs said. “I worry about possibly rolling that back if we all of a sudden have a large load that needs to be served with fossil fuels, or [require] a fossil fuel backup.”
The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office argued that state regulators need to scrutinize data center deals to make sure developers are paying the total cost of their impact on the system, including additional regulatory, operational and maintenance work that might be required on the grid.
In an interview, Sullivan said he was impressed by tech companies’ interest in having data centers in Minnesota because of the 2040 net zero goal, not despite it. They want to buy electricity from Minnesota utilities rather than build their own power systems or locate in neighboring states, he added, and the October meeting left him confident that “we can deal with this.”
A solar-powered microgrid project backed with funding from the Biden administration aims to reduce energy burdens and provide backup power to a tiny northern Minnesota tribal community.
The Pine Point Resilience Hub would serve an elementary school and community center in Pine Point, an Anishinaabe village of about 330 people on the White Earth Reservation.
In June, the project was selected to receive $1.75 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Storage for Social Equity (ES4SE) Program, which helps underserved and frontline communities leverage energy storage to make electricity more affordable and reliable. It’s part of a slew of Biden administration funding related to grid resilience and energy equity that has spurred several tribal microgrid projects across the country.
The developers, locally owned 8th Fire Solar and San Francisco-based 10Power, hope to finish the project next year, and have also secured funding from Minnesota’s Solar for Schools program and foundation grants but said they still need to raise about $1 million. They’re also counting on receiving about $1.5 million in federal tax credits, which face an uncertain future with the incoming Trump administration.
“The idea of the microgrid is to help with infrastructure,” said Gwe Gasco, a member of the White Earth Nation and the program coordinator with 8th Fire Solar, a thermal solar company based on the reservation.
Tribal communities were largely bypassed during the massive, federally funded push under the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 to bring electricity to remote rural areas of the country. As a result, grid infrastructure on many reservations remains insufficient to this day, with an estimated 1 in 7 Native American households on reservations lacking electricity connections, and many more contending with unreliable service.
On top of higher-than-average electric reliability issues, tribal communities also generally pay higher rates for electricity and face higher energy burdens due to poverty and substandard housing.
On the White Earth Reservation, these challenges are most pronounced in Pine Point, where one-third of residents live in poverty. Gasco said the area is among the first to suffer from outages, with eleven occurring over the last five years, according to the Itasca-Mantrap Electric Cooperative that serves the area.
The Pine Point School on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. Credit: 10Power
The Pine Point Resilience Hub project will build on an existing 21-kilowatt solar array, adding another 500 kilowatts of solar capacity along with a 2.76 megawatt-hour battery storage system, enough to provide about 12 hours worth of backup power for residents to be able to charge cell phones, power medical equipment, or stay warm in the event of a power outage.
Gasco said the microgrid could be especially important in the winter, given the area’s “brutally cold” weather and reliance on electric heat. They also hope it will reduce utility costs, though they are still negotiating with the local electric co-op on rates for power the system sends and receives from the utility’s grid. Itasca-Mantrap President and CEO Christine Fox said it doesn’t set net metering rates, which are determined by its electricity supplier.
The project developers hope to qualify for additional federal tax credits by using equipment largely produced in the U.S., including Minnesota-built Heliene solar panels, inverters made in Massachusetts, and Ohio-produced solar racks.
The developers have partnered with the Pine Point School District, which plans to incorporate the microgrid into an Ojibwe-language curriculum on renewable energy. A monitoring interface will allow students to see real-time data in the classroom.
“It’s powerful to me that this (project) is at a school where we’re hoping to inspire the next generation of kids,” said Sandra Kwak, CEO and founder of 10Power, a for-profit company that specializes in developing renewable energy projects in tribal communities.
Corey Orehek, senior business developer for Ziegler Energy Solutions, which has been hired to do the installation, said they plan to work with a local community college to train students for solar jobs.
“One of the things that we want to drive in this is workforce development,” Orehek said. “We want to leave something that’s not only a project that’ll last 30 years but provide the training and experience for community members to either start their own energy companies or become contractors in the clean energy workforce.”
The resilience hub is the second such project announced by a Minnesota tribe in just recent months. The Red Lake Nation received $3.15 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Local Government Energy Program in late September for a behind-the-meter microgrid project at a secondary school.
The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community is also working with Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative to build a $9 million microgrid with U.S. Department of Energy funding. The electric cooperative will install a 4 megawatt-hour energy storage system and add a 1 megawatt solar system at the reservation in suburban Minneapolis.
It’s unclear whether federal funding for such projects will continue in President-elect Trump’s second term, but for now tribal energy advocates see microgrids as a good solution to both lower energy burdens and improve reliability.
“This is a great opportunity to create a success story in terms of leveraging cutting-edge technology, being able to help frontline communities, and for tribes and co-ops to work together,” Kwak said.
A year-old state law is helping to bring new voices before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, and advocates and officials hope its impact will grow as more organizations learn about its existence.
Since 2007, small nonprofits have been able to seek financial compensation to help pay for expert testimony they provide in utility rate cases. State lawmakers last year expanded the concept to cover a broader range of cases, including utility pilot programs, infrastructure projects, and performance measures.
“It’s really about getting voices to the table to present us with new arguments and new issues for us to consider,” said Commissioner Joe Sullivan.
Since the law took effect in May 2023, the commission has authorized $124,318 in payments to four organizations, including two groups — Community Power and Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light — that had never before requested or received compensation for expert testimony. The other recipients were the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota and Energy CENTS Coalition, which advocates for low-income ratepayers.
Under the previous rules, some years, including 2019, 2021, and 2022, saw no payouts at all. In 2023, regulators approved $96,000 for testimony under the old program before state lawmakers expanded its scope.
“We’re glad to see broadening participation due to the change in this intervenor compensation law,” said state Sen. Nick Frentz, a Democrat from North Mankato who supported the legislation. “Our hope is that the more voices that contribute, the better the quality of the eventual PUC decisions.”
Where the money goes
Anyone can comment on utility commission matters, but having a significant impact requires investing in staff time and experts — precious commodities unavailable to many smaller nonprofits.
The compensation process involves nonprofits submitting documentation and a sum for testimony related to a specific case. Rules require the nonprofits to have a payroll of no more than $600,000 for participation in commission proceedings and 30 full-time or fewer employees for the previous three years. The commission judges the merits of reimbursement based on six criteria that focus on whether the organization’s testimony materially impacted its decision.
Once nonprofits receive approval for compensation from the commission, the utility involved in that case pays them. The Legislature set a maximum limit on how much any utility will pay annually to intervenors, ranging from $1.25 million for Xcel Energy to $100,000 for Otter Tail Power and other smaller utilities.
Although the new law broadened the types of cases in which nonprofits could seek compensation, three of the six 2024 awards went to organizations testifying in the Xcel Energy rate case. However, the Citizens Utility Board received the largest amount for its recommendations in an integrated gas resource planning docket, an issue that would not have been eligible for compensation in the past.
Nonprofits typically use the money to offset the high costs of expert testimony or staff time related to cases where utilities usually spend millions to influence the commission’s decisions. Other intervenors often include larger nonprofits, industrial organizations, chambers of commerce, labor unions, national associations and, on occasion, cities and counties.
Frentz, who chairs the Senate’s Energy, Utilities, Environment and Climate Committee, said he thinks more organizations are out there that could provide testimony at the commission. But they must have the resources available before intervening, and believe their input will influence the Public Utilities Commission, he said.
Commissioner Sullivan said regulators have “seen a little bit more utilization” of the compensation law. The 2023 law specifically encouraged tribal participation, though no tribes have done so yet. Barriers may include a lack of familiarity with the commission or the need for a local budget to hire experts or allocate staff time to complex cases, Sullivan said.
‘A difficult needle to thread’
Solar entrepreneur and tribal clean energy advocate Robert Blake said he was not surprised to hear tribal nations had not participated in the expanded intervenor law. He said many are administratively stretched thin and focused on taking advantage of federal and state opportunities to fund clean energy projects on reservations.
Also, many of the issues that come before the commission involve large utilities that do not serve reservations, which often also get electricity from locally owned cooperatives, Blake said.
Community Power and Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light each received $17,984 after each requested nearly $26,000. Community Power employee Alice Madden said the money paid for expert witnesses who “cost hundreds of dollars per hour” but did not cover the staff time of either organization, which involved door-knocking and collecting more than 1,000 ratepayers’ comments.
“The intervenor compensation works for covering narrow costs but does not help people intervene and front the costs of that,” Madden said. “It accomplished allowing us to have extra witnesses, but it does not cover the full cost of intervening, nor of organizing to get community voices to the table.”
Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light Executive Director Julia Nerbonne was disappointed that the commission only partially reimbursed what it had requested, but she decided against appealing the decision. The organization has been involved in several dockets outside of rate cases and may someday ask for compensation for expert witnesses.
“I feel like the PUC has a difficult needle to thread, and I appreciate that they did that (provided compensation),” Nerbonne said. “I want to say thumbs up for expanding it.”
In its order, the commission granted compensation to the two organizations because they “made a unique contribution to the record, promoting public policies and representing interests of people of color and low-wealth households that would not otherwise have been adequately represented. The evidence and arguments they presented would not otherwise have been part of the record and were an important factor in producing a fair decision.”
Citizens Utility Board Executive Director Annie Levenson-Falk said the compensation received in 2024 was the amount it would have been for similar testimony in the past. The commission granted it compensation in two dockets, the largest of which was $41,385, for promoting a requirement that natural gas providers file periodic integrated resource plans that the commission has required from electric companies. The money paid for some of the expense of outside experts to research and testify on behalf of the organization.
In an order approving payment in the natural gas case, the commission said it had adopted the Citizens Utility Board’s recommendation that the state’s three natural gas utilities develop integrated resource plans. The commission determined how much each utility would pay the board, with Xcel providing nearly $30,000.
The prospect of compensation does not impact the Citizens Utility Board’s decisions on whether to intervene in commission matters. “It is something we keep in mind at the end if the PUC (Public Utilities Commission) has adopted a position we advocated,” Levenson-Falk said.
Levenson-Falk said she was unsurprised that organizations new to regulatory proceedings have yet to often participate in hearings or ask for reimbursements. “I think it is more difficult for a group that does not have utility regulatory professionals,” she said. “We have a team of folks who do this kind of work, but if it’s your first time coming to the PUC, it’s a challenging statute to take advantage of. It’s not easy.”
Energy CENTS Coalition received $36,785, the second largest disbursement under the new law, for testimony in the Xcel rate case that led the commission to adopt a “low-income, low-usage” discount. The organization provided “an important factor in producing a fair decision and would not otherwise have been part of the record,” the commission said in its order.
Executive Director George Shardlow wants to expand the organization’s involvement beyond rate cases to other issues. “It’s very helpful for a small consumer advocacy organization to have this added support to play in dockets over and above rate cases where consumer advocates need to show up,” he said.
The commission is required to issue a report on the intervenor law to the Legislature by July 2025.
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