As low-hanging fruit gets tougher to find, utilities are being forced to think creatively about their energy conservation programs. Eames is founder of the National Theatre for Children , a Minneapolis education company that stages thousands of shows each year in school gyms and auditoriums across the country.
Minnesota’s largest electric utility is asking state regulators to change the way it sets electricity rates so that it isn’t penalized when customers conserve energy. As part of a rate increase request filed Monday , Xcel Energy is proposing to partially separate its revenue from electricity sales starting in 2015, a policy known as “decoupling.”.
Utility customers who own solar panels are doing society a favor, helping to cut carbon emissions and ease transmission line congestion, among other benefits. Or, they’re power-grid freeloaders, lowering their own electric bills but sticking everyone else with a bigger share of costs for infrastructure they still depend on after dark.
This December photo by Mary Hartman shows an eagle nest she says is one of several in the Goodhue Wind project area. Mary Hartman almost daily makes the 45-minute drive from her home east of Rochester, Minnesota, to a horse farm north of town, where she takes out a 15-year-old mare named Paloma for rides around the countryside.
The view from Andersen Corporation finally includes some optimism. The Bayport window and door maker was seeing signs of recovery this summer, with new home construction and remodeling up a combined 10 percent nationally in the first half of 2012. Andersen is privately held and doesn’t share financials, but it said it grew or maintained its market share during that period.
Brian Van Slyke didn't want to be a boss‚ and he didn't want to have one either. But as his one-man record label grew to a three-person operation, they needed some type of organizational structure. "We wanted to be our own bosses, together," Van Slyke says. In 2006, Fall of the West Records was reincorporated as a worker-owned cooperative, giving each member an ownership stake and convincing Van Slyke to tailor his college education around cooperatives.
When Target started rolling out expanded grocery sections two years ago in its general merchandise stores, the promotions featured the kind of eye-catching design people have come to expect from the retailer. Three-dimensional fruit bulged from billboards over First Avenue. Produce-filled shopping baskets jutted off bus shelters.
Muve was Minnesota’s “breakthrough business idea” of 2007. The obesity-fighting fitness device concept was the unanimous winner of that year’s Minnesota Cup contest, earning it prize money and piles of positive press. Not only that, the startup had a big-name partner behind it in the Mayo Clinic.
The small, wearable clip tracks how many calories users burn and vibrates when they’ve been inactive for too long. The concept was inspired by co-founder Dr. James Levine’s research at Mayo, which suggested people could lose or maintain weight by breaking up their day with periodic, light activity.
“We had a lot of momentum,” founding CEO John Montague recalled this week, three months after debtors shut down the company and claimed its assets. “I get asked every day: what happened? Why did it fail? How could that have possibly failed, when it had the Mayo Clinic involved and it was focused on obesity and it had every possible macro-economic trend working in its favor?
“The answer to that question is probably a little bit complicated.”
That’s an understatement, and the story took its latest twist this winter when seven Muve investors used the assets they repossessed from Muve to launch a new, strikingly similar company called Gruve. The move gives the Minnesota technology a second chance to make a splash in the market, but it’s also left vendors and other investors feeling burned and believing they’re still owed a piece.
It was a warm Saturday in late May, and instead of rolling out the dock up at the cabin or going for a jog around the chain of lakes, more than 600 people chose to spend their day inside Best Buy’s Richfield headquarters, attending an all-day series of workshops and discussions. Welcome to Minnebar, a geeky gathering that’s become a twice-a-year tradition for many in the Twin Cities tech and design communities.