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Minnesota PUC Approves Operations Extension for Xcel Energy's Prairie Island Nuclear Plant

LCG, August 15, 2025--Xcel Energy announced that the company received state approval yesterday from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to extend operations of the Prairie Island nuclear plant through the early 2050s. Prairie Island has two units that have a combined generating capacity of 1,100 MW. The units’ current operating licenses expire in 2033 and 2034.

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PGE Announces Addition of 475 MW of Battery Energy Storage Systems to Improve Grid Reliability and Costs

LCG, August 7, 2025--Portland General Electric (PGE) today announced the completion of three, four-hour lithium-ion utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Oregon, adding 475 MW and more than 1.9 GWh of dispatchable capacity to serve the Portland metro area. Each of these BESS facilities can deliver power during peak demand or when other electric generating facilities are limited, which improves system flexibility, reliability and costs.

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Industry News

DOE Issues Grid Study

LCG, May 9, 2002-The U.S. Department of Energy has submitted its electricity transmission study, originally called for by the White House.

Released by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, the study supports the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in its plan to divide the country into Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), which would be responsible for reliability. Likened to the public highways, RTO's are intended to make electricity easy to trade across state lines by the formation of a national grid.

The report includes cooperative regional transmission siting forums, which would have FERC, DOE, and state authorities design transmission line siting rules. It calls for Congress to mandate power grid reliability standards and suggests that transmission investment be "merchant" projects, which would reportedly result in no risk to ratepayers.

The DOE also wants Congress to give FERC limited federal eminent-domain authority in siting new transmission lines and says that savings from their transmission plans would be significant because national transmission would avoid bottlenecks that cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year. DOE's report attributed an estimated $500 million in combined savings to eliminating transmission limitations in California, Mid-Atlantic PJM Interconnection, New York, and New England.

The study also suggests promoting technologies like superconductors.

Abraham said the timing of the study, which was ordered a year ago, was not intended to coincide with the current energy bills pending in the House and Senate.

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