Utilities Owning, Buying More Wind, Planning for Carbon Regulations

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http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=52676

Utilities are increasingly embracing wind -- owning their own facilities, buying wind-generated electricity from other producers, and even factoring future carbon regulation into their financial equations, said expert participants on a utility panel at WINDPOWER 2008.

Speaking on the panel were Mike Kotara, executive vice president of energy development at wind power-leading municipal utility CPS Energy; Andy Hesselbach, wind farm project manager at utility We Energies; Galen Barbose of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Matthew Kaplan of Emerging Energy Research.

As representatives of two different kinds of utilities, Hesselbach and Kotara were able to offer perspectives on the reasons behind their differing wind forays. As a municipal utility, noted Kotara, CPS Energy cannot take advantage of the federal production tax credit and so has no plans to pursue ownership of wind facilities. CPS, however, is the leading municipal utility for delivering wind to its customers; the utility had 501 megawatts (MW) of wind on its wires as of the end of 2007, thanks to its purchases of the renewable energy source.

We Energies presents a different story. The investor-owned utility owns the recently completed 145-MW Blue Sky Green Field wind farm in northeast Fond du Lac County, Wis., and is looking into owning five or six additional projects to meet its state renewable electricity standard requirements. "We didn't initially intend to own wind projects," said Hesselbach. However, when the utility calculated such financial factors as the debt load associated with entering into a power purchase agreement, it decided the wind energy it would deliver "might as well provide some return to our shareholders." Ownership, he said, is also ultimately cheaper for customers as well.

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