With advancements in technology and interest growing in renewable sources of energy, the way public utilities do business may need to change. On October 24, Grand Marais City Administrator Mike Roth shared some of what he learned about this at a Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (SMMPA) meeting he attended. Grand Marais is in the SMMPA collaborative.
Roth reported that Jack Uldrich, a “futurist” and former member of Governor Jesse Ventura’s cabinet, said that computing speed and memory are doubling every year. Large-scale changes in societies – such as the changes that could take place with this degree of technological transformation—sometimes occur without people realizing they are happening. A potential example of this would be that more and more customers could begin generating their own electricity, leaving public utilities unprepared for how this would affect their business models.
Roth quoted Uldrich, saying, “These things are coming. You better get ready for it.”
With demand for energy continuing to rise throughout the country, the state of Minnesota already has incentives in place for public utility cooperatives to conserve energy. Switching to clean, renewable sources of energy would be good for the environment, and being able to tap into local sources of energy could help lower costs for consumers. Utilities are just not prepared to deal with these things, however, Roth said.
Emerging technologies have brought the cost of natural gas so low that when SMMPA’s Sherco III plant went down this year, purchasing power from other sources cost SMPPA less than generating its own power would have been.
The city of Grand Marais will be tapping into its own local source of energy when the solar panels at Gunflint Hills Golf Course are up and running. The Cook County Local Energy Project initiated the grant-funded project. Ironically, the city-owned golf course is a customer of Arrowhead Electric Cooperative Inc. because it is not within the city’s public utilities boundaries.
Roth told the PUC board he will be interested to find out how much power the solar panels generate, how much maintenance they require, and whether paying to install a system like this would result in an overall cost savings.
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