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Xcel wins state OK for new power lines

http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/5461575.html

Xcel Energy Inc. won approval Thursday for one of the state's largest transmission projects in several decades, an $86 million pair of power lines that will bring wind-generated energy from Buffalo Ridge in southwestern Minnesota to customers in the Twin Cities and elsewhere.

The state's Environmental Quality Board gave the go-ahead to the project, which includes an 86-mile line along Interstate Hwy. 90 between power substations in Lakefield, Minn., and Sioux Falls, S.D. Another 40-mile line will connect the Buffalo Ridge substation with a substation in Nobles County in southwestern Minnesota.

"This system was originally built to serve farms and homes, and there weren't many of them," Xcel spokesman Paul Adelmann said.

Xcel has up to 600 wind turbines along the 30-mile Buffalo Ridge. In 2003, the power company agreed to supply at least 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources. In return, the state granted Xcel an expansion of its nuclear-waste storage and an extension on the life of its Prairie Island nuclear generating plant.

The new power lines will give Xcel the ability to move 825 megawatts of power from Buffalo Ridge, enough to supply more than250,000 households.