Published

2 years ago

February 2, 2024

Alice Rush

Xcel Energy has proposed a new energy plan for the Upper Midwest that incorporates the company’s carbon reduction goals by extending use of its nuclear plants while adding more renewable energy and battery energy storage systems.

To achieve these reductions, company plans include adding 3,600 MW of solar and wind, as well as 600 MW of BESS, by 2030. Xcel Energy is also proposing to extend the operating life of its two Prairie Island Nuclear units by 20 years and the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant by 10 years.

“This new proposal builds on our already-approved plans to retire all coal plants by 2030 and replace them with nation-leading amounts of renewable energy like wind and solar, as we transition to a clean, secure energy future,” says Xcel Energy’s Ryan Long. “Our strategy will support renewables with always-available generation resources to ensure the reliability that our customers depend on.”

Xcel Energy’s Upper Midwest electric system serves Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota and Michigan.

The post Xcel Energy Releases New Upper Midwest Energy Plan appeared first on Solar Industry.

Xcel Energy Releases New Upper Midwest Energy Plan

Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy Concepts Can’t Violate the Laws of Physics

Published

18 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

In the early days of 2GreenEnergy, my people and I were vigorously engaged in finding solid ideas in cleantech that needed funding in order to move forward.

I vividly remember a conversation with a guy in Maryland who was trying to explain the (ostensible) breakthrough that he and his team had made in hydrokinetics. When I was having trouble visualizing what we was talking about, he asked me to “think of it as a river in a box.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You mean you take a box full of standing water, add energy to it get it moving, then extract that energy, leaving you with more energy that you added to it.”

“Exactly.”

I politely explained that the laws of physics, specifically the first and second laws of thermodynamics, make this impossible.

He wasn’t through, however, and insisted that, in his office, his people had constructed a “working model.”

Here’s where my tone descended into something less than 100% polite. I told him that he may think he has a working model, but he’s wrong; if he believes this, he’s ignorant; if he doesn’t, but is conducting this conversation anyway, he’s a fraud.

“But don’t you want to come see it?” he implored.

“No. Not only would not fly across the country to see whatever it is you claim to have built, I wouldn’t walk across the street to a “working model” of something that is theoretically impossible.”

—

I tell this story because the claim made at the upper left is essentially identical. You’re pumping water up out of a stream, and then claiming to extract more energy when the water flows back into the stream.

Of course, social media today is rife with complete crap like this. We’ve devolved to a point where defrauding money out of idiots is rapidly replacing baseball as our national pastime.