The (Almost) Daily Brief

The PUC Sets Four Hearings on the Iron Range 345-kV Line

By Megan Dayton · 9/17/2026

ENG  Two Minnesota battery projects reached draft site permits on the same Oct. 5 comment clock. The Cottage Grove project, docket IP7180/ESS-26-184, is an 80-megawatt, 320 megawatt-hour battery from LSP CG Storage built inside the existing LSP Cottage Grove Cogeneration Facility in Washington County and tied to 115 kV through the plant substation bus bar. Its hearings are Sept. 23 at 6pm at the Glacial Park Building, 9900 Ravine Parkway South, and Sept. 24 at 6pm online. The Mankato Energy Center project, docket IP7178/ESS-26-158, is a 30-megawatt, 60 megawatt-hour battery inside the 720-megawatt Mankato Energy Center in Blue Earth County, with an underground 115-kV generator tie running under 800 feet. Its hearings are Sept. 22 at 6pm at the AmericInn Event Center, 240 Stadium Road, and Sept. 24 at 6pm online. Both target construction in the second quarter of 2027, with commercial operation at Cottage Grove in the second quarter of 2028 and at Mankato in the third quarter of 2028. Comments on both close Oct. 5 at 4:30pm.

Sources: Minnesota PUC, project 26184; project 26158; EQB Monitor, Sept. 15

ENG  MnDOT is hiring a consultant to rewrite the state plan for Minnesota’s commercial ports and waterways. The department posted the solicitation Sept. 16 under contract 1064045. Letters of interest are due Oct. 8 at 2pm. The work is open only to consultants pre-qualified in work type 7.13, Planning - Class III. The current state policy plan dates to 2014. The Office of Freight and Commercial Vehicle Operations, which administers the legislatively mandated Port Development Assistance Program, will lead the update. The selected firm works through eight tasks, including updating the MnDOT Port Directory with facility capacity, utilization, condition, and ownership, building GIS and static maps of the ports and waterways network, producing a planning-level statewide estimate of port and waterway needs, drafting policy recommendations on the assistance program, and supporting three public meetings in the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota. The plan covers the port authorities at Duluth, Saint Paul, Red Wing, Wabasha, and Winona along with private and for-hire facilities, and the final draft must meet state planning guidelines and Maritime Administration best practices. Work starts on contract execution, anticipated in October, with a draft report in June 2027 and completion by Sept. 30, 2027.

Sources: MnDOT professional/technical notices; Scope of work, MnDOT contract 1064045

ENG  Xcel Energy’s own analysis puts 215 Minnesota distribution feeders at zero remaining capacity for new generation. Docket E002/M-25-404 was on the Public Utilities Commission’s agenda this morning. The commission has not posted a written order. Of the 1,049 feeders modeled, 215 showed zero maximum generation hosting capacity in the November 2025 update, against 150 in the February 2025 update. On the load side 195 feeders showed zero maximum hosting capacity, against 132 a year earlier. Primary over-voltage and thermal limits constrain the most feeders on the generation side, and primary under-voltage and continuous rating capacity utilization constrain the most on the load side. The report is the biennial distribution study Minnesota Statutes §216B.2425, subd. 8 requires, which Xcel has agreed to file annually. The public picture is deliberately incomplete. Xcel keeps 115 of the 1,049 feeders off the published heat map to protect critical infrastructure including hospitals and data centers, blurs the feeder lines on the map it does publish, and released no heat map and no nodal results for the load analysis pending the commission’s separate grid security docket. A firm screening an interconnection site is working from a partial map. Staff also asks the commission whether to let the Executive Secretary accept future reports by notice when no comments arrive within 30 days of filing.

Sources: PUC staff briefing papers, docket E002/M-25-404; PUC agenda, Sept. 17

POLICY  The EPA’s power plant carbon repeal reached the Federal Register this morning. The final rule repealing most of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards appears at 91 FR 58954 and takes effect Nov. 16. The supplemental proposal published alongside it, which would rescind the 2015 greenhouse gas findings and repeal every remaining Clean Air Act section 111 standard for the source category, appears at 91 FR 59002 under RIN 2060-AX00. Comments on that proposal close Nov. 2, and a virtual public hearing is scheduled for Oct. 1. Comments on the information-collection provisions are best assured of consideration if the Office of Management and Budget receives them by Oct. 19. Both documents sit in docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124. The agency states that it is not reopening the final rule and is not soliciting further comment on it, except where a commenter believes it bears on the statutory-authority question the proposal raises.

Sources: Federal Register 2026-19071; Federal Register 2026-19072

POLICY  FHWA removed the I-81 Viaduct from the National Network and added the Community Grid in its place. The final rule took effect Sept. 11 at 91 FR 57789, under docket FHWA-2026-0498, RIN 2125-AG31, and 23 CFR Part 658. It de-designates the viaduct between the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway bridge and the I-81/I-690 interchange, adds the Community Grid as part of Business Loop 81, and reclassifies I-481 as I-81, which stays on the network. The New York State Department of Transportation filed the request on July 6, 2021, so the change took five years. Under 23 CFR 658.11 a modification request goes in writing to the FHWA division office and must be endorsed by the governor or the governor’s representative, and an addition must carry a suitability analysis against the standards in 23 CFR 658.9.

Source: Federal Register 2026-18548

BIZ  The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate for the first time since 2023. The Federal Open Market Committee lifted the federal funds target range a quarter point to 3.75 to 4 percent on Wednesday, on a 12-0 vote, and said the move supports a timelier return to its 2 percent inflation goal. Floating-rate construction loans and revolving credit tied to the prime rate reprice with it. Michael Guckes, chief economist at ConstructConnect, said projects sitting at the edge of their profitability targets will not go to bid, and that an owner squeezed by higher carrying costs can push out contractor payments or shelve a job already under way. Brian Strawberry, chief economist at FMI, reads the same decision differently and expects the 10-year Treasury, which is where commercial real estate actually borrows, to fall if the increase convinces markets the Fed will hold inflation down. Nonresidential construction input prices rose 8.9 percent over the year in August. Housing and private commercial development carry the most sensitivity to borrowing costs, while data centers and semiconductor plants, funded largely on corporate cash flow and government incentives, carry the least.

Sources: Federal Reserve, FOMC statement, Sept. 16; Construction Dive, Sept. 16

BIZ  Steel is up 25 percent in a year and fabricated steel lead times have doubled to 55 weeks. Tom Park, Skanska’s vice president of strategic supply chain, attributes the squeeze to data center and semiconductor demand running mills and fabricators at capacity, on top of tariffs. Dean Lewis, the firm’s director of mass timber and prefabrication, says clients are asking about timber again. A gravity frame in mass timber costs more up front, but on a three-story office study the savings on foundation, lateral system, facade, interior finishes, and schedule brought the two options close to cost neutral. Lumber escalation is running 0 to 3 percent, held down by weak residential demand despite tariff pressure on Canadian softwood, which supplies 25 percent of U.S. consumption. Lumber is 65 to 70 percent of the input cost of mass timber, according to François Robichaud of Forest Economic Advisors, and North American cross-laminated timber and glulam capacity still runs below its ceiling.

Source: Construction Dive, Sept. 16

BIZ  Contractor backlog rebounded in August on data center work. The Associated Builders and Contractors put its Construction Backlog Indicator at 8.5 months in August, up from a cyclical low in July and still under the level of the preceding months. Firms holding data center contracts reported 9.9 months of backlog against 8.3 months for firms without one. Anirban Basu, ABC’s chief economist, said one in six ABC members is under contract on a data center, the highest share on record. Only contractors above $100 million in revenue lost backlog in August, and that drop was 0.2 months. The same survey turned up a sharp increase in unprompted mentions of labor shortages, and the share of contractors planning to cut staff over the next six months rose to 12.3 percent, the highest reading since December 2025. Zack Fritz, an ABC economist, put the split down to the data center boom, with firms holding that work unable to find specialty trade contractors and firms without it facing softening demand.

Source: Construction Dive, Sept. 16

ENG  A Suffolk and MIT white paper puts numbers on where AI moves a project’s cost and schedule. The paper models six interrelated construction processes and finds that applying them together cuts project cost 17 to 20 percent and schedule 22 to 25 percent. The case study is a retrospective analysis of a 180,000-square-foot, $180 million multifamily building completed in San Francisco in 2024. Design automation is named the clearest upstream enabler, feeding permit compliance checking, procurement automation, schedule generation, and subcontractor coordination, which is why the authors treat the levers as compounding rather than additive. Jit Kee Chin, Suffolk’s chief technology officer, said the point of the paper is that the gains reinforce one another. The authors built the study from a roundtable, a literature review, and expert interviews, and say the results are not causal.

Source: Construction Dive, Sept. 16

WORKFORCE  Adolfson & Peterson promoted a former laborer to chief operating officer. John Herrera joined the Minneapolis-based contractor at 18 as a laborer and moved through multiple positions to regional president of AP Mountain States. He takes on national operations and remains based in Colorado. Brad Hendrickson became chief operating officer in March 2025 and then succeeded Jeff Hansen as chief executive on Hansen’s retirement. Herrera’s read on the market is that costs move quickly and conditions vary widely between markets, which puts a premium on planning early and on candor with clients and trade partners.

Source: Construction Dive, Sept. 16

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