Representative Dusty Johnson

Nancy Edmonds Hanson
Moorhead made news 25 years ago when local electrical customers stepped up to install one of the first publicly owned wind turbines in Minnesota. It was a big step on the leading edge of technology, reflecting the city’s commitment to renewable power sources at a time when most were only talking about that topic.
Two years later, the wind tower dubbed Zephyr was joined in the Capture the Wind program by Freedom, a second turbine added in 2001. In 2015 the first of nine solar arrays joined the two on the city-owned site north of 15th Avenue and west of 34th Street North. Like the turbine program, Capture the Sun was supported by voluntary monthly fees added to their MPS bills by Moorhead customers eager to count on renewable power.
Today, says Moorhead Public Service general manager Travis Schmidt, the city has achieved its goal of being 100% net-zero carbon. That means that every kilowatt delivered by the city’s municipal utility company either comes from renewable source – hydroelectric, nuclear, wind and solar power – or is offset by RECs, or renewable energy certificates that offset the small portion of carbon-based electricity that MPS buys from longtime supplier Missouri River Energy Services.
While the solar arrays are still going strong, the towering turbines that started it all are aging out of the picture.
“Think of a 25-year-old car,” Schmidt suggests. “It takes a lot of maintenance.”
Finding parts to repair the turbines has become a major challenge, he says. “They’re not even made anymore,” he says. “Now we try to find refurbished parts. It’s in the back of our mind: At some point, it will no longer be financially feasible to maintain them.” The MPS board, he says, has begun looking into the cost of decommissioning.
Yet their present disrepair does little to dim Zephyr and Freedom’s legacy. When both were in their prime at the turn of the century, 1% of the city’s power needs were met by local wind generation. The cost of the two was covered by monthly surcharges on residents’ and businesses’ bills. That percentage has slipped in recent years, both due to the larger overall draw to power a growing city and the turbines’ more frequent pauses for repairs.
The much newer solar garden promises to be far better, Schmidt adds. The panels have no moving parts and need little more than an annual cleaning, similar to washing windows. Now fully paid by the 267 residents who participated in their installation – including Clay County, MSUM and Concordia College, which each purchase a full array – residents who signed up for the program currently receive bill credits of from $35 to $40 each year.
The Zephyr and Freedom towers are unlikely to be replaced, Schmidt says, primarily because of height restrictions put in place by the Federal Aviation Administration, spurred primarily by the lower flight patterns of smaller private planes: “Over time, the technology changes, and things get bigger and taller.”
But Moorhead Public Service continues to stand tall in terms of net-zero carbon, due partly to its historic power source and participation in forward-thinking Missouri River Energy Services.
The city utility receivers half of its power from WAPA, the Western Area Power Administration operated by the U.S. Corps of Engineers. It collects hydroelectric power generated by 57 dams in 11 states, including Fort Peck, Montana; Garrison, North Dakota; and Oahe, South Dakota.
The remainder of its power, less the wind and solar energy generated here in Moorhead, comes through MRES. The consortium of 85 public utilities in Minnesota, Iowa and the Dakotas does draw less than a quarter of its wattage from four carbon-based plants – the Laramie River Station in Wyoming, the natural-gas-powered Exira Station in Iowa, and a diesel-fired peaking plant in Watertown, South Dakota, along with smaller supplementary diesel units used to meet peak demands owned in some member communities.
That’s where the RECs, renewable energy credits, come in. Moorhead Public Service purchases about $60,000 in credits to offset the 13 to 18% of its energy that comes from those nonrenewable sources. Pointing to that percentage, Schmidt notes that 20 years ago, carbon-based power represented almost half of the electricity supplied to residents by MPS – major progress toward its goal.
That’s possible because today the lion’s share of the electricity the utility purchases through MERS comes from renewable sources. MERS operates five wind farms in Minnesota. It owns the largest solar development in South Dakota near Pierre, is building another in Marshall, Minnesota, and is considering a third near Brookings and also obtains power from the Point Beach Nuclear Plant near Two Rivers, Wisconsin. “All in all, it’s a pretty good portfolio,” Schmidt observes.
Schmidt reports that Moorhead users’ power demands have been “fairly flat” for the last decade, due in part to adoption of more energy-efficient appliances. Usage reached an all-time high in July of 84 megawatts; 50 to 60 megawatts is a more typical monthly total. Even then, he says, the local load factor is generally about 70% of its capacity year-round. “Sometimes usage peaks in summer, sometimes in winter,” he explains. “For the last few years, it has hit the peak in summer.”
The MPS board may consider other opportunities to temper peak demand. “They’re evaluating whether a diesel-fired peaking plant might be cost-effective,” the manager says. “Batteries may be another way to mitigate the fluctuation and offset peak demand. Battery capacity is starting to grow. We’ll have to look at the financial side there, too – whether the benefits outweigh the cost.”