Transmission Cost Allocation Proposal Threatens Wind Development

Washington, DC, August 13, 2009 - The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and its regional partner Wind on the Wires (WOW) have filed a protest with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) urging rejection of a proposal from the Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO).

MISO claims that current cost allocation rules produce inequitable results for a few transmission owners in some circumstances. In particular, the transmission system operator maintains that the existing cost-allocation method can introduce high costs to a small group of transmission owners with facilities in the vicinity of, but whose load is not proportionally benefited by, upgrades to the system necessary to accommodate interconnection requests from generators.

AWEA and WOW argue that the problem is impacting only a small fraction of transmission owners in the Midwest ISO’s footprint, but the proposal would overhaul the cost allocation for the entire region without any justification for removing costs from the vast majority of transmission owners and imposing them on generators.

“The proposed policy change is like requiring the next car entering a congested highway to pay the full cost of adding a new lane,” said WOW Director Beth Soholt. “Obviously such a policy is unworkable, which in our case means that wind projects will not be able to connect to the grid.”

“At a time when the wind industry is one of the few bright spots of the U.S. economy, having created 35,000 new jobs last year, this policy is saying the Midwest is becoming less friendly for the wind business, and that will clearly have an impact on not only wind development but manufacturing and supply-chain jobs throughout the region,” said AWEA CEO Denise Bode.

Read the filing of Protest of The
American Wind Energy Association
and Wind On The Wires
.