200 MW virtual power plant approved
Regulators approved Xcel Energy’s plan to expand a virtual power plant by 200 megawatts using utility‑owned community batteries, with deployment targeted for 2028. The decision frames community batteries and distributed storage as growing components of utility planning. (indexbox.io)
A virtual power plant is a network of small batteries run together like one big power plant, and Minnesota regulators approved Xcel Energy’s plan to add 200 megawatts of that capacity by 2028. (xcelenergy.com) The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approved Xcel Energy’s broader 2024-2040 Upper Midwest Energy Plan on February 20, 2025, and that settlement required the utility to file a distributed capacity procurement proposal by October 3, 2025. (mn.gov) Xcel filed that proposal in October 2025 under the name Capacity*Connect, with plans to place batteries at local businesses, industrial sites, nonprofits, and other customer locations on parts of the grid where extra capacity is most useful. (xcelenergy.com) The company said it would own and operate the batteries, charge them when power is cheap, and discharge them during periods of high demand so the devices act as one dispatchable resource instead of many separate backup systems. (xcelenergy.com) That approach grew out of Minnesota’s long-range power planning case, where regulators approved 600 megawatts of standalone storage by 2030 and more than 1,800 megawatts of additional distributed energy resources by 2030. (mn.gov) The same plan paired more wind, solar, and batteries with one new 420-megawatt gas peaking plant in Lyon County and life extensions for Xcel’s Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear plants. (mn.gov) State regulators described the approved resource plan as a portfolio built around reliability, resilience, affordability, energy efficiency, distributed energy resources, and infrastructure upgrades as electricity demand rises. (content.govdelivery.com) Xcel told regulators the distributed battery buildout would help meet growing demand without relying only on large, central power plants, and would use customer sites to add capacity at strategic points on the distribution grid. (xcelenergy.com) Environmental groups that backed the 2025 settlement said the plan shifted Xcel away from an earlier proposal for six new gas plants and toward more renewable energy, storage, and customer-side resources. (fresh-energy.org) Xcel said hosts for the batteries would receive direct payments, including sites in environmental justice communities, while the utility integrates the devices into system operations for all customers. (xcelenergy.com) If Xcel deploys the batteries on schedule, the 200-megawatt network would become one of the first utility-planned efforts in the United States to treat community-scale batteries as a regular capacity resource in state power planning. (xcelenergy.com)
