News

MMPA Reports Progress for Shakopee Power Facility

February 17, 2016



State and local approval processes moving forward.


The Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (MMPA) is meeting key milestones on its way to constructing a clean-burning power generation facility fueled by natural gas in Shakopee.

The plant will be located on a six-acre parcel on land sold to MMPA by Canterbury Park. MMPA is the wholesale power supplier to Shakopee Public Utilities.

The project, expected to be constructed this year, recently completed three important points of progress:

  • The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has completed its environmental review process.
  • The MPCA has issued an Air Permit for operation of the facility.
  • The City of Shakopee has issued a Conditional Use Permit for the site.

The power generated by the 46 Megawatt facility is a key piece of MMPA’s portfolio of diversified resources, and will mean even greater power reliability for Shakopee’s utility customers.

“Having this type of local, distributed power generation means that in the event of outages elsewhere, Shakopee will have a local, reliable source of electricity,” said John Crooks, Shakopee Public Utilities Manager and an MMPA board member.

Other municipal utility members of MMPA are in Anoka, Arlington, Brownton, Buffalo, Chaska, East Grand Forks, Elk River, Le Sueur, North St. Paul, Olivia, Shakopee and Winthrop. The management partner for MMPA is Minneapolis-based Avant Energy.

Avant Energy’s Vice President of Consulting and Development, Kelsey Dillon, said, “We believe that locally-generated power is good for the Agency and the Shakopee community, and supports MMPA’s mission to provide competitively priced, reliable power to each of our member communities.”

Dillon said that natural gas is an exceptionally clean-burning fuel for power generation and pointed out that MMPA also owns and operates two renewable energy facilities – Oak Glen Wind Farm near Blooming Prairie and the Hometown BioEnergy facility in Le Sueur – along with another natural gas generation plant on the north side of Faribault on Highway I-35.

#

.