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By Paul Huttner and Ngoc Bui

The demand for electricity in Minnesota is growing, and that means costs are going up, too.

Xcel Energy has requested a 13 percent rate increase over the next two years and plans to increase capital spending by $11 billion over the next five years.

Walker Orenstein, a reporter at the Minnesota Star Tribune, said the utility plans to make major infrastructure investments.

“It’s everything from new carbon-free generation, so renewable power investments, spending on its fleet of nuclear plants [to] transmission, so big power lines that carry energy across long distances. And then there’s some really basic nuts-and-bolts stuff, too, fundamentally for reliability, like distribution systems,” Orenstein said.

Xcel is also preparing for the massive demand from new data centers across the eight states it serves — potentially an additional 9,000 megawatts of energy.

Orenstein said the utility will rely on federal tax credits to help offset rate increases for its customers.