Q&A: Kristie Fiegen, incumbent Republican candidate for Public Utilities Commission

Republican Public Utilities Commissioner Kristie Fiegen hopes South Dakota voters give her another six-year term on Nov. 5. 

The state’s three elected commissioners oversee the regulation of private utility companies, which provide essential services including telecommunications, electricity and natural gas. The commissioners are assisted by a staff of analysts and lawyers. 

The job of a commissioner is ensuring private utilities provide reliable services at fair rates. They also approve major projects, such as new power plants or transmission lines.

Republican former Gov. Dennis Daugaard appointed Fiegen to fill a commission vacancy in 2011. She was then elected to her own term in November 2012 and reelected in 2018. She’s currently the chairperson of the commission.

Fiegen, who lives in Pierre and Sioux Falls, previously served as a state legislator, as president of Junior Achievement of South Dakota, as South Dakota area manager for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and as a sales representative for Monsanto.

Forrest Wilson, a Democrat, and Gideon Oakes, a Libertarian, are challenging Fiegen in the election.

Following are portions of a Searchlight interview with Fiegen, edited for length and clarity.

Why are you running?

I’ve always been an advocate for people and doing the right thing. Ethics is important to me, very important to me, it’s my standard. And I love the state of South Dakota.

I was called by Governor Daugaard to become a public utilities commissioner to fill a vacant seat. My family and I really prayed about it: whether we wanted to get out of the nonprofit world. I love the nonprofit world and looking out for people and helping people, and so, we had to decide if I wanted to go into public service and look out for people differently. And after much prayer, I said yes to Governor Daugaard. And now I love it.

The people of this state need a strong voice at the Public Utilities Commission. They need a strong voice nationally so that South Dakota doesn’t get run over by D.C. politics. 

Summit Carbon Solutions wants to build a carbon dioxide pipeline through South Dakota, to carry carbon emissions from ethanol plants to an underground storage site in North Dakota. Summit will need a PUC permit. What’s your view of the project?

I’m not going to weigh in on that, because as commissioners, we’re quasi-judicial and need to remain neutral, and let facts and evidence guide us. Everybody wants to know how we feel, but if those other two candidates make any type of statement to you and end up on the PUC considering it, they’re going to be in the circuit court and thrown out of the docket; they won’t be able to make a decision on it.  

This is the issue many South Dakotans want to know your view on. Is there anything you want to say about it?

Q&A: Forrest Wilson, Democratic candidate for Public Utilities Commission

The ex parte rules [which require commissioners to remain neutral on matters before them] talk about how the three commissioners are quasi-judicial. So, we cannot talk, listen, or discuss open dockets with other commissioners, the public, with even the Public Utilities Commission staff that’s in the docket.

Is there an active carbon pipeline docket right now?

This is part of the ex parte. Or a future docket. You want a commissioner who is ethical, and I believe the ex parte rules are extremely important.

Does the Public Utilities Commission fairly balance the interests of utility companies and their customers?

At the PUC, we have to balance affordability, but also, investor-owned utilities, according to state law, have the right to earn a reasonable rate of return. What we do in the Public Utilities Commission is spend an incredible amount of time, often a year, looking at all their financials. 

I’ll give Xcel Energy as an example. Xcel came in for a rate case in 2022 and we made a decision in June 2023. They asked for [an electric rate increase] around 18%, and we cut their request by 67% [to a 6% rate increase], and it was because I spent years in advance getting my questions ready, realizing I did not want South Dakota ratepayers to pay for the regulations of Minnesota. So, anytime they passed a new law in Minnesota, I’d take a note, and we would kick out those additional expenses.

When you look at the inflation of the last six years, it’s well over 20%, and what we’ve done with investor-owned utilities is kept their increases well below that, and it’s around 10%.

How do you feel about wind, solar and batteries displacing some of the need for coal and natural gas?

In South Dakota, we generated 77% of our energy last year from renewables, and then about 23% from more traditional sources.

As a public utilities commissioner, we cannot be biased. So, we have to believe in all-above energy and adhere to the standard of a quasi-judicial judge.

Q&A: Gideon Oakes, Libertarian candidate for Public Utilities Commission

What I will say is we need a mix of dispatchable, and dispatchable means that when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not showing, we still have electricity, so that is more of your base load, or a peaker; a peaker is natural gas that can fill in that gap. Baseload is more like coal or nuclear.

So, it will be interesting to see. The generation mix is changing because of Washington D.C.’s goals of net-zero. And so, we have to keep the lights on.

There was a day last June that we had 0.35%, less than 1%, from wind in our Southwest Power Pool market, which is 14 states. But then there was a day in May of 2022 when 88% of our electricity for Southwest Power Pool was generated from wind. So, we need all of the above energy to make it work and keep the lights on.   

How concerned are you about climate change vs. our ability to “keep the lights on?”

My concern as a commissioner is to keep the lights on, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

The issue is the acceleration of, the movement to carbon zero is too fast; the transition is too fast. So, we are counting on technology that hasn’t been developed, especially in a commercial sense. So, battery storage, small modular nuclear, all those types of things need to be developed and the cost of things needs to come down to make things affordable. So, there’s affordability, reliability, all of it’s a balance right now.