As American Experiment’s Bill Glahn reported last week, Xcel Energy is proposing to double its battery storage at the Sherco coal plant in Becker, from 300 MW to 600 MW of storage. The company also intends to add 135.5 MW at the Blue Lake facility in Shakopee and 768 MW of solar generation.
Xcel’s filing has asked for a decision to be made by mid-February 2026, which is only 3.5 months away. Similar filings at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission can easily take six months or more to approve.
Xcel needs “speedy approval” because it must “capture a time-sensitive opportunity to leverage federal tax credits” and meet the “100 percent by 2040” zero-carbon energy standard that was passed in 2023. The filing asks that the PUC approve the recovery of costs for Sherco battery and solar storage, as well as the Blue Lake battery project, through the Renewable Energy Standard rider.
The filing explains that, “Earlier approval increases the likelihood that projects will qualify for the expiring tax incentives and reduces the risk of construction delays or project failures.” Xcel expects to offset 30 percent of the Blue Lake battery costs and 40 percent of the Sherco solar and storage costs with federal tax credits.
The Blue Lake battery storage project would start construction in 2026 and “is expected to” come online in 2027. The 200 MW capacity Sherco solar project would come online in October 2029.
Notably, the filing retracts as “protected data” the Levelized Cost of Energy (in dollars per MWh) for selected solar and the Levelized Cost of Capacity for storage projects. Xcel also retracts the capital costs for the Sherco Solar project (as seen in this screenshot of the filing). That makes it difficult for ratepayers to understand the cost assumptions underlying Xcel’s claims about affordability.
The most important point to remember about batteries is this: they don’t produce energy, they only store it for later use (and with losses along the way). They also have upper limits on the time that they can discharge before needing recharging, with four hours being the standard benchmark. Batteries won’t save clean energy, so the PUC should scrutinize projects that will cost ratepayers millions of dollars, even with federal taxpayer support — and won’t contribute much to reliability and averting blackouts.
