Joey Senkyr

People talk a lot of shit about Minnesota's regulated utilities, and it's not all undeserved, but holy cow could it be sooo much worse.

What a strange thing to be nativist about.

A small crowd of people watch the Amtrak Borealis arrive in Winona on a sunny afternoon.

Achievement unlocked: attend a site visit via Amtrak.

Everyone's all fired up about the Waymos not working, but imo the real news story is how PG&E got themselves into a position where a single substation event could drop 130,000 customers.

I think there's a ton of opportunity for more HVDC, but as an overlay on the existing grid, not as a retrofit of existing lines.

My understanding is that multiterminal (3+ endpoints) HVDC circuits are operationally persnickety enough that they wouldn't be worth it even if there wasn't a cost premium. So an AC>HVDC conversion target would have to be a long, high-power line that's point to point without intermediate taps.

But changing the voltage to 230kV instead would require at the very least a reconfiguration at each affected sub, and probably new transformers and new switchyards for the new voltage level in most cases. Once you're doing all that, you might as well just go ahead and rebuild the xmsn towers as well

Reconductoring is generally the (relatively) fast and easy capacity upgrade, which is not often compatible with a voltage conversion. Doubling the ampacity of a 115kV line from probably only requires matching buswork upgrades in the substation at each end (or maybe not, subs are often overbuilt) 1/2

30mph is actually a flatly dangerous speed to be driving in neighborhoods. 25 is the compromise but 20 is the reasonable speed. An extra 50 seconds a mile is not much of a price for 9x lower mortality rate for the residents if the neighborhood you're traversing

<30secs if we're talking 55

Honestly lol that we're all pretending that Uber/Lyft, the services that by design require drivers to be looking at their phones half the time, are paragons of road safety and Waymos are going to be significantly worse.

A basketball court under construction at Bottineau Park

Idk how it made it past the current park board, but it's very cool that they're turning the parking lot at my neighborhood park into a basketball court.

Poking around tax websites, it looks like he might be doing a self-employed 401(k), which has a $23k limit for 2024 (so ~$8k of tax liability), and the contribution deadline extends (to Oct. 15) if you get an filing extension, so he could invest the $23k for 6 more months. Just working-class things!

Yes! The new lower rate is meant to encourage adoption of dual fuel systems like yours by lowering the cutover temperature where it becomes cheaper to heat with the gas furnace instead of the heat pump.

Energy Charge Below is a breakdown of the energy charge per kilowatt hour (kWh). Note: Energy charge is measured per kWh June through September: $0.13 October through May: $0.11 October through May with electric space heating: $0.06

If you've installed a heat pump (or have electric baseboard heat or similar) in Xcel's territory in Minnesota, make sure you're on the residential space heating rate - it's more than 40% cheaper than the normal wintertime residential rate.

www.mncee.org/mn-puc-appro...

Even if you've always gotten a refund, never had to pay in at tax time, who does the federal refund come from? Not your state government!

Yeah, it's not the ideal maintenance facility (or station) location(s), but if gently-used passenger rail infrastructure suddenly becomes available on an existing route Amtrak's not really in a position to not at least try for it.

Based on a single bullet point from the last slide of this presentation last month, Amtrak seems to be investigating extending the Borealis to the maintenance facility in Big Lake. Gotta think that would include stopping at a station or two, not deadheading the whole way.
miprc.org/Portals/0/us...

The city where the mayor had to declare a state of emergency to ensure the garbage kept being collected?

Back of the envelope math, but the park board could probably bring in $4-500k/year by metering the part of West River Parkway immediately north of Plymouth, where parking is 80%+ utilized all day every day between North Loop commuters, Mpls Bouldering Project climbers, and Pryes Brewing patrons.

It was bad when Johnson did it too! Something can be bad even if it's your fav doing it!

I think a fundamental problem is that there's not one big issue to fix with the LRT ridership, but a ton of small ones. Shorter trains are a piece, less frequent trains are a piece, Twins attendance being down is a piece, last train being at 11pm so you can't rely on LRT after a concert is a piece..

This is what we've got on the newly reconstructed Lowry St NE from Washington to Central. It works... fine, in a less dense setting, where there legitimately isn't a wide enough right of way for anything better. Absolutely unacceptable to build that on Lyndale to preserve street parking.

A selfie of a smiling couple holding an infant wearing a train onesie on the Amtrak Empire Builder. The infant is staring off into space.

Baby's first train!

instead of just having people park in the ample parking lot and come grab a bag of food. Clearly a procedure that was put together in the "no masks, only distancing" early pandemic days and adhered to through 2024 for whatever reason. Didn't see anyone not in a car, but I wasn't doing checkin. (2/2)

I found myself volunteering at one of these last summer through my employer. Happy to help get food to people who need it, but it was a bizarre experience: a long line of idling cars backed up half a block down Rice St as volunteers tried to find the open tailgate button for *this* car model (1/2)

For what it's worth, the estimated restore times are intentionally very conservative during storm events. In Northeast I was given an estimate of 2:15pm tomorrow, but the lights came back on about 10 minutes ago.

11/10 day to be told that my corporate laptop needs reimaging and I just need to kill two hours downtown in the early afternoon.

I'm counting more than 30 in Minneapolis, though maybe I'm misremembering the height or construction date on a couple.

0 seems right for St. Paul though!

Idk, I just took the northbound 11 from 11th and Nicollet a couple hours ago, and taking ten minutes to get from 11th to Washington on Nicollet when the 4 and 6 can get the same distance in five minutes on Hennepin sucks, actually!

The 31-day pass is still available, as far as I know.

www.metrotransit.org/go-to-card