The delivery of reliable, affordable electricity, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year-while being good neighbors and environmental citizens.
This is our commitment to you.
That reliability begins with generation, continues through transmission and distribution, and is achieved whenever someone hits the light switch, starts the oven, or turns on the TV without having to give a second thought if the power will be there.
Minnesotans are using more electricity than ever, and studies show that the region needs nearly 1,200 additional megawatts of electricity by 2012.
That's why we're working together—five different utilities serving more than a million people in five states in the Upper Midwest—to add 630 megawatts of new baseload generating capacity at the Big Stone power station near Milbank, S.D. Big Stone II will not be the only facility we use to meet your growing needs for electricity. Our plans also call for more than 850 megawatts of wind plus 100 megawatts of additional, non-wind renewables.
We want you to understand how this project fits with our commitment to meet your ever-increasing electricity needs in a way that is both financially prudent and sensitive to our environment.
We are committed to:
- Reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury. Emissions from Big Stone I and II combined will be less than the current discharges from the Big Stone I power plant, alone.
- Ensuring that carbon dioxide emissions are reduced at least 20 percent compared to other coal-fired plants.
- Constructing electrical transmission lines to service Big Stone II that are also large enough to encourage and accommodate development of additional wind and other renewable resources.
- Continuing development of generating resources that represent the optimal mix of renewables, fossil-fuel-generated electricity, and conservation-ensuring reliability and affordability for our customers, while aggressively pursuing our environmental stewardship responsibilities.
- Engaging in a fully open and responsive process of public meetings with state regulators, our customers, and other interested members of the public as the Big Stone II project progresses through the permitting process.
- Investing in energy efficiency-because energy conservation is an important part of a balanced energy mix for our customers.
- Being good neighbors.
Our promise to you: to strive each day to provide you with reliable, competitively-priced electricity in a way that meets the highest standards of environmental stewardship.
Chuck MacFarlane, President, Otter Tail Power Company
Thomas Heller, CEO, Missouri River Energy Services
Bruce Imsdahl, President & CEO, Montana-Dakota Utilities Company
Mike McDowell, General Manager, Heartland Consumers Power District
Bob Schulte, Interim Chief Executive Officer, Central Minnesota Municipal Power Agency
