Xcel Energy 2009 Annual Report Download - page 7

CONNECTED฀•฀XCEL ENERGY 2009 ANNUAL REPORT฀• 5
reliability of our system and increase our ability
to add renewable energy to our portfolio of
energy resources.
BUILDIN G A CLE A N
ENERGY FUTURE
Reducing emissions, adding renewable energy
and working with customers to conserve energy
are important parts of our effort to achieve a clean
energy future. For Xcel Energy, environmental
leadership is more than just a promise. We have
the results to prove our commitment—and every
part of the effort creates value for you.
For the fourth year in a row, Xcel Energy
was the No. 1 provider of wind energy in the
nation, according to the American Wind Energy
Association. We had almost 3,200 megawatts of
wind energy on our system at the end of 2009,
with plans to have up to 5,000 megawatts on line
by 2015. Although we purchase the majority of that
wind power, we actually own about 127 megawatts
of wind energy and plan to develop another
351 megawatts of owned wind in southwestern
Minnesota and North Dakota.
On the solar energy front, we are No. 5 in the
nation for solar capacity and manage a fast-growing
program called Solar*Rewards that offers rebates
to residential and business customers for installing
on-site solar systems. In 2009, we announced a
partnership to build a 17-megawatt solar power
plant in Colorado. We already purchase power from
an 8.2-megawatt solar farm adjacent to the new
facility. At the end of 2009, we had 40 megawatts
of solar energy on our system. By 2015, we plan
to add up to 250 megawatts of concentrating solar
power with storage capacity and an additional 200
megawatts of photovoltaics.
In Wisconsin, we received permission from the
Public Service Commission to install biomass
gasification technology at our Bay Front power
plant. The project will convert the plant’s remaining
coal-fired unit to biomass gasification technology,
allowing it to use 100 percent biomass in all three
boilers and making it the largest biomass plant in
the Midwest. We hope to complete the approval
and engineering processes this year and begin
construction in 2011 and commercial operations
in late 2012.
We are fortunate to operate in parts of the
country with abundant renewable resources,
and we leverage that advantage by investing in
technologies to increase the viability of renewable
energy. In Colorado, we are supporting an
advanced solar testing and application center
called SolarTAC that is designed to further the
use of solar power, and we are conducting a
concentrating solar power thermal integration
demonstration at one of our coal-fired facilities.
In Minnesota, we are testing the viability of storing
wind power in large batteries. We also initiated a
study to improve wind forecasting for the industry,
allowing for better integration of wind energy.
Our nuclear plants are vital to our environmental
strategy, too, because they provide safe, reliable,
reasonably priced electricity with no carbon
emissions. In 2009, we continued to make
progress in our effort to renew the operating