MINOT — Xcel Energy is a Minnesota-based power company that once paid $37,000 to send Doug Burgum, then the governor of North Dakota, on a luxury trip to the Super Bowl.

I begin with that fact to illustrate the fact that Xcel is a company that likes to play political games. They have also made the explicitly political decision to shut down cheap, reliable, base load power in favor of expensive and unreliable sources like wind and solar.

Now they expect North Dakota rate payers to foot the bill in a big, big way. They want their nearly 100,000 customers in North Dakota to get hit with a nearly 20% rate increase, though the impact of that sort of power price hike is more profound than just a spike in your monthly utility bills. Businesses have to pay their power bills, too, and when the c

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