Iowa high court backs MidAmerican’s wind expansion

• 12 years ago (2012-06-09)
• David Flin

North America 1021 Renewables 776

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The Iowa Supreme Court in the USA has upheld a regulatory decision that allowed the state’s largest utility to undertake a huge expansion of wind energy utilisation,  rejecting a challenge from a rival company that claimed that the expansion was unnecessary and unfair to other energy producers.

The court voted 5-0 to uphold a 2009 decision by the Iowa Utilities Board that gave MidAmerican Energy the ability to nearly double its wind power generation, and guaranteed that the firm could raise customers’ rates in the future to recover much of the cost of expansion. The court rejected a challenge by NextEra Energy resources, a producer that sells electricity in the wholesale market.

NextEra is the largest wind energy producer in North America, owning 65 wind facilities in the USA. MidAmerican owns more wind generation capacity than any other rate-regulated utility in the USA, with 30 percent of its capacity set to come from wind by the end of 2012.

The Court’s decision means that MidAmerican can continue with the expansion approved by regulators in 2009, which allowed the firm to add 1001 MW of wind energy by 2013, and allowed the company to pass on some costs to customers in a future rate increase. It also means that MidAmerican would not have to purchase wind power from NextEra.

MidAmerican spent nearly $1 billion in 2011 creating and expanding wind farms in central and western Iowa. The company plans additional wind projects this year.

MidAmerican is asking regulators to increase customer rates by up to $114.7 million over the next two years, which would increase the average monthly residential bill by $3.63.