Local View: Need to store energy a potential boon for Iron Range

Minnesota Power has announced the closure of the final two Boswell coal plants by 2035. Minnesota Power plans to replace the Boswell units with wind-energy resources. Currently, Boswell provides 165 well-paying jobs.

A close look at the opportunities this closure presents can help us replace those jobs.

Today, wind, solar, biomass, and hydro have surged worldwide by almost threefold since 2000. Renewables in the U.S. contributed almost 25% of electric energy production in 2024. Worldwide use has reached 20% of all primary energy use. We are transitioning to a green, renewable, and sustainable world.

Wind and solar energy are intermittent. They do not produce energy constantly. Also, in areas where large amounts of renewables are produced, like Texas and California, the production of energy exceeds demand. When that happens, the energy is idled or wasted. This wasted energy has reached significant levels — specifically, the amount of energy produced by Boswell today.

Now we begin to understand the depth of demand for long-storage batteries. High-capacity, long-discharge batteries store idled energy.

Today, the first installation of iron-air batteries in Cambridge, Minnesota, is underway by Great River Energy and Xcel Energy near Becker. Iron-air batteries present several advantages to lithium batteries. Iron is the fourth-most-common element in the Earth’s crust and is relatively inexpensive to extract. Also, iron-air batteries discharge for 100 hours, much longer than lithium batteries.

And here is something that should make this story even more intriguing to local legislators and investors: The central element in iron-ore batteries are direct-reduced pellets — and direct-reduced pellets will soon be a product coming out of Mesabi Metallics near Nashwauk, if all permitting goes through. The tremendous need for long-term energy storage to reduce wasted energy could, right here in northern Minnesota, come together with a supply of direct-reduced pellets — to be used at a repurposed Boswell plant.

Form Energy, which uses iron as a central component of its batteries, recently opened a 55-acre facility in Weirton, West Virginia. This barely supplies a drop in the bucket of the demand for energy storage. Why couldn’t Form Energy or another battery company be enticed to repurpose the soon-to-be obsolete Boswell sites for their next plants, with water, rail, electric transmission infrastructure, an experienced workforce, and the direct-reduced iron-grade facility already nearby?

Russ Mattson of the Two Harbors area is an electrical engineer and engineering consultant who since 2012 has been an advocate for environmental issues, including with at least two national nonprofits.