In this week's News Flash, Allen and Phil discuss Xcel Energy adding 4.2 GW of clean energy to the US Midwest, The European Investment Bank's partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo to unlock up to €8 Billion for clean energy, and Empire Energy and The Herrick Corporation's partnership to form an offshore wind venture.







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 Welcome to Uptime News Flash. Industry news, lightning fast. Your hosts Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro discuss the latest deals, mergers, and alliances that will shape the future of wind power. News Flash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www. IntelStor. com.







Excel Energy plans to add 4. 2 gigawatts of clean energy in the upper Midwest by 2030. The plan includes 3200 megawatts of wind, 600 megawatts of battery storage, and 400 megawatts of solar. This could reduce regional emissions by up to 88 percent compared to 2005 levels. The company will extend operations at two nuclear plants and has cut one planned gas plant.







The remaining gas plant will be hydrogen capable. Now, Xcel Energy notes that the wind power remains key, but solar deployment is lower than previously considered due to economic factors. Factors. Phil, this is an interesting approach by Xcel Energy that they're really focused on wind. I was at a recent conference where a lot of wind operators said that their focus over the next couple of years will be on solar for a lot of their operations.







Philip Totaro: Well, and, and Xcel has been traditionally very solar focused but the fact that they would pivot to wind at this point themselves is reflective of the market dynamics for wind and price stabilization and in the merchant markets, as well as for utility power offtake agreements and the fact that they've Excel has committed to building more transmission in Minnesota North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, and, and even out into Michigan, that's going to facilitate some of this capacity build out.







So, the fact that they're kind of putting these plans in place and getting approval from the, the various state regulatory bodies to, to be able to build both the transmission and then, this wind solar and battery storage cap Capacity. That's very impressive that, they're, they're going to be able to push forward with it.







It doesn't obviously uncork any more than what they've comm...