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City of St. Cloud seeks $3.5 million from RDA to keep green hydrogen project moving amid grid limits
Summary
Tracy Hodel, public services director for the city of St. Cloud, asked the Senate Energy, Utilities, Environment, and Climate Committee for $3.5 million from the Renewable Development Account to add a battery system to the city’s green hydrogen project after interconnection limits prevented previously planned export controls.
Tracy Hodel, public services director for the city of St. Cloud, told the Senate Energy, Utilities, Environment, and Climate Committee that the city needs $3,500,000 from the Renewable Development Account to add a battery system to its green hydrogen project at the municipal water treatment facility.
“This project will be first of its kind in the world,” Hodel said, describing a treatment facility that will use all end products of the electrolysis process — hydrogen, oxygen and waste heat — to reduce energy costs at the facility. She told senators the electrolyzer is on order and expected to arrive this fall.
Hodel said the project has advanced for nearly three years but has encountered a grid-capacity constraint during the interconnection process. “Our utility provider is no longer in a position to be able to extend these controls to meet our needs due to grid capacity concerns,” she said, explaining that adding a battery is the currently feasible workaround to continue the project at scale.
Hodel told the committee the St. Cloud facility is already a leader in resource recovery and has operated with net-zero status since 2020. She and the bill’s author, Sen. Mark Putnam, said a pause or a reduction in hydrogen production would directly affect off‑takers that had expressed interest in using the hydrogen product.
Senators asked about the drafting of appropriation language and its funding source. Senator Klein raised a technical question about whether the bill language appropriated RDA funds or general fund dollars; staff and testifiers said they had discussed that nuance and expected RDA funding to be the path.
Senator Green asked why the battery had not been included in the original scope; Hodel said the original scope relied on local controls to prevent export to the grid but interconnection findings changed and made the controls insufficient. Hodel said the battery was not part of the original interconnection scope because the project team expected the controls to be a workable solution in earlier planning.
Putnam said the committee would lay Senate File 17 13 over for possible inclusion.
If approved, the requested funds would be used to add energy storage to allow the electrolyzer to operate while managing local grid constraints and to continue delivering hydrogen to identified off‑takers.
