Good morning, and happy first Friday of July. 

State regulators on Thursday gave Xcel Energy a green light to test a battery system to store electricity in Becker. MPR’s Kirsti Marohn reports the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved the project, which Xcel expects will begin operating in late 2025. The Minneapolis-based utility is partnering with Massachusetts-based Form Energy on the project, next to its Sherco coal-fired power plant. Xcel plans to retire the plant over the next seven years and is building a large solar project on the site. Form Energy's iron-air battery can store electricity for 100 hours, much longer than the four hours of a lithium-ion battery. Xcel says the battery could help it manage energy demand — especially when solar and wind farms aren't producing power — as it moves to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources that don’t generate greenhouse gasses. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists, submitted comments in support of the project. But the state attorney general's office raised concerns about the cost — which Xcel isn't publicly disclosing — and the impact on Xcel customers’ electric bills. The PUC didn’t require Xcel to reveal the number. 

After having to pay a settlement to a library director who lived in California, Hennepin County has a new policy that prohibits department heads from working out of state. The Star Tribune reports: County Administrator David Hough, who approved what he called "an interim policy during a public health emergency," took the most heat for allowing newly hired Library Director Chad Helton to permanently move to Los Angeles and run the county's 41 library branches from there. Many front-line library staffers, who had to show up for work despite COVID fears, were furious. Helton resigned and settled with the county for $60,000 as payment for "emotional damages." The other long-distance county official, Human Resources Director Michael Rossman, helped develop the policy and then raised eyebrows when he moved in 2021 to Palm Springs, Calif., where he worked using video conferencing. Now, with Rossman planning to retire in November, county officials are making it clear that his successor won't be allowed to run the department from half a continent away. The job posting states that the position "will be performed onsite in Hennepin County, Minnesota," and that the new director "must reside in the greater Twin Cities area."

A Minnesota State Patrol officer on the lookout for speeding caught drivers on consecutive days zooming by at more than 100 mph. MPR’s Brian Bakst reports the state patrol says the trooper stopped a man in Minnetonka Thursday afternoon going 109 in a 60 mph zone. He caught another driver the day before on the same stretch of Interstate 494 going 103 mph. Patrol Lt. Gordon Shank says it’s a familiar problem. “We do see drivers that go over 100 mph. And right now speed is our No. 1 leading factor for fatal crashes. So it's something that we do take seriously,” Shank said. “And we continue to focus on educating the public and holding those drivers accountable that do drive at those speeds.” 

Two state lawmakers are collaborating on more than just bills. Rep. Marion O'Neill, R-Maple Lake, and Sen. Jason Rarick, R-Pine City, were married on July 4. "We are overwhelmed with gratitude and filled with joy as we reflect on our wedding day. We want to thank everyone for your well-wishes, kind words, and heartfelt congratulations in this exciting time. We are so fortunate to have such amazing people in our lives," the two said in a statement Thursday. They added that they will “keep and maintain residences in their respective districts.” O'Neill has legally changed her name to Marion Rarick, the statement said, although she will run for reelection next year using her former last name. 

Later this summer historians in Moorhead will install a statue on a city corner to honor a Black Civil War veteran. MPR’s Dan Gunderson reports Moorhead might seem like an odd place for such a memorial, but the idea is to recognize a long-forgotten piece of history. Felix Battles was born into slavery near Memphis, Tenn. Records track him to a plantation in Mississippi as a teenager. Battles then escaped and made his way north to St. Paul, working on Mississippi River steamboats, said Krueger. In 1864 he joined the army at Fort Snelling and fought for the Union. After the war, Battles became one of the earliest residents of Moorhead, arriving in 1873 with his wife Kate and several extended family members. A job with the newly constructed railroad likely led him to settle in Moorhead. A newspaper at the time called him “the pioneer barber of the Red River Valley.” He lived in Moorhead until his death in 1907. He shares a simple marker with other family members in a Moorhead cemetery. 

The weather has cooled down in Minnesota the past couple of days, but it was unofficially the hottest week in recorded history globally. The Associated Press reports: Earth's average temperature set a new unofficial record high on Thursday, the third such milestone in a week that already rated as the hottest on record. The planetary average hit 63 degrees Fahrenheit, 17.23 degrees Celsius, surpassing the 62.9 and 17.18-degree marks set Tuesday and equaled Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition. That average includes places that are sweltering under dangerous heat — like Jingxing, China, which checked in almost 110 degrees Fahrenheit — and the merely unusually warm, like Antarctica, where temperatures across much of the continent were as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal this week. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has not confirmed the data.