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The Department requests proposals for a technical expert or experts to investigate whether replacement wholesale power costs following a turbine failure at Xcel Energy?s coal-fired Sherburne County Generation Station (?Sherco?) Unit No. 3 were reasonably recovered from ratepayers.? In November 2011, Sherco Unit No. 3 was undergoing a planned overhaul outage.? When the turbine was brought up to speed following the overhaul, however, the turbine?s low-pressure finger-pinned blade attachments failed.? This failure, in turn, prompted violent vibrations that caused the generator shaft to fracture, and the exciter shaft to both fracture and break free with sufficient energy to burst through the doghouse enclosure, then skip across the turbine deck and through two glass windows of a nearby conference room before coming to rest on the floor of the control room.? The failure released oil, hydrogen, and other combustible materials, causing a fire in the turbine area.? Sherco Unit No. 3 remained shut down until October 2013, nearly two years. Xcel Energy has an obligation to serve its customers, and thus with the shutdown of the Sherco Unit No. 3 the Company was obligated to procure replacement power costs to serve its customers. These costs were recovered from ratepayers as they were incurred.
The focus in this proceeding is on whether Xcel Energy or its ratepayers should bear the costs of wholesale power Xcel procured while Sherco Unit No. 3 was unavailable. The desired goal is for the selected responder(s) to work with Department staff to provide technical expertise that allows the Department to fully participate in these investigative proceedings to represent the public interest. Through written testimony or expert reports, the selected responder(s) will be asked to analyze and explain the outage for a lay audience and evaluate whether Xcel Energy reasonably and prudently maintained Sherco Unit No. 3.? In the course of this work, the selected responder(s) will also assist with developing written discovery topics and questions, and review Department briefs for technical accuracy.
A Request for Proposals (RFP) and required forms are available to view and download on the Minnesota Department of Commerce?s RFP website at https://mn.gov/commerce/industries/rfp/ through the submission deadline.
Proposals must be submitted by no later than Friday, August 26, 2022 at 11:59 PM Central Time. Proposals must be submitted to [email protected]. Instructions for submitting proposals are detailed in the RFP. Late proposals will not be considered.
This request does not obligate the State to complete the work contemplated in this notice.? The State reserves the right to cancel this solicitation. All expenses incurred in responding to this notice are solely the responsibility of the responder.
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