Last Friday was the Prehearing Conference and an odd time was had by all. It’s admittedly ALJ Ann O’Reilly’s first transmission contested case, so she’ll be having a fun time, I’m sure. And I’m pretty sure it’s also Christi Brusven’s first big transmission line, and even Eric Swanson’s… ya know, I’m really feeling like an old fart!
The most interesting part of this is that the “Regional Utilities” are planning to intervene, Xcel, Otter Tail Power, and MRES, with the purpose of telling the Commission that it should instead use its “system alternative” which would connect down to CapX 2020! Like wow, that’s going to be a hoot! I don’t know that’s ever been tried before, kinda cheeky, eh? But they’ve got to fill CapX with something, and we all knew it wasn’t needed, didn’t we?!?!
Here’s the “system alternative” line from Dorsey into CapX at Barnesville (p. 11, North Area Study, Application, Appendix M) (note that for this study they increased Manitoba Hydro imports to 1,100MW):
And now for the proposed schedule… We’ll be circulating the scheduling order and then send it to the ALJ, so it’s not official, but this is pretty much it, and when it IS official, I’ll be posting it.
The Environmental Review schedule continues as before:
Scoping Comments are due by 4:30 p.m. on March 14, 2014. Send to bill.storm@state.mn.us
The rest of the schedule looks like this:
