MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Things turned ugly the last time utilities strung high-voltage power lines across Minnesota in a major way.

Protesters covered themselves with pig manure, armed themselves with baseball bats, put ammonia fertilizer on state troopers and lined up to get arrested. Fifteen transmission towers near Lowry and Sauk Centre were toppled in 1978. But the power lines went up anyway.

A consortium made up of Xcel Energy Inc. and 10 other utilities in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and Wisconsin is preparing for what they hope will be a milder public reaction this time around.

The group is mailing 73,000 letters this week to landowners that outline the first major power transmission project in Minnesota in more than 25 years. Called CapX 2020, it would crisscross Minnesota with about 650 miles of new high-voltage lines.

"We're designing this to be the most open process ever for a transmission project," said Laura McCarten, an Xcel executive who is co-executive director of CapX 2020.

It would cost $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion project and be completed in 2014, and would be the first of a number of power grid expansions that will cost billions more in the years ahead.

George Crocker, who fought the project of the 1970s and is critic of the latest proposal, said he expects public opposition again - with a difference.

"Instead of the tension being out in the field, the tension will be in the hearing room, in putting the facts on the table," said Crocker, executive director of the North American Water Office, an environmental group based in Lake Elmo. "I think it's a certainty that there won't be the response that we had in 1978," he said, adding, "We'll see if the system is able to be fair."

Crocker said stringing lower-voltage lines short distances from wind turbines scattered across the state would be cheaper and simpler to implement. Xcel Energy officials dispute that.

Consumer demand for electricity in Minnesota has doubled since 1980. The utilities say that in 2006, the average home had 26 electronic devices, from high-definition TVs and DVD players to digital cameras and cordless phones. In 1975, a typical home had two or fewer.

The proposed transmission lines will add capacity to carry 4,000 to 6,000 more megawatts, enough electricity to power 4 million to 6 million homes. Peak demand now is about 20,000 megawatts.

The utilities also argue that they need more transmission capacity to meet the demand in urban areas for alternative sources of energy, such as wind turbines on the breezy bluffs of southwestern Minnesota.

They don't expect the new lines will cross the property of all 73,000 landowners who receive notice. All owners of land within a dozen miles of potential routes will be notified, but exact routes won't be set for months.

Many opponents of transmission expansion in the 1970s were motivated by fears that electrical "leakage" from high-voltage power lines would hurt people or animals. However, a number of scientific studies found no link between the lines and illness. Some opponents were also motivated by property rights, opposing the seizure of land for transmission lines.

But the utilities this time point to a 150-mile transmission line expansion underway in southwest Minnesota, where just eight of 390 parcels in the path of the lines have ended up in condemnation proceedings. "We expect to settle six," Xcel spokeswoman Mary Sandok said.

Landowners in the path usually receive a one-time payment in compensation. After the lines go up, livestock and farm equipment simply go around the towers, which are 120 to 150 feet high and spaced 600 to 1,000 feet apart.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will hold hearings over the next couple of years to decide if CapX2020 is needed, and the PUC must approve the proposed routes. The Minnesota Department of Commerce also will seek public comment and prepare an environmental report.