Consumers, not wind developers, are likely to bear cost of building new transmission lines

"The rural Midwest is booming with wind turbines these days -- but guess who's going to pay the $16 billion it will cost to move all that clean electricity to the cities that need it? Probably you," asks and answers Ted Evanoff of The Indianapolis Star. (Star photo by Rob Goebel: Turbines along Interstate 65)

"Officials are trying to figure out how much wind developers should pay to build the transmission lines to get their energy to market," Evanoff writes. "Because other regions have shifted the entire cost to utility rate payers, the Midwest officials likely will feel pressure to do the same. If they don't, industry analysts say, it could hurt the development of green energy in the region. The Midwest -- with its heavy reliance on coal-fired power plants -- can ill-afford that, as federal regulations clamp down on carbon emissions." Much the same is likely to be true in other coal-dependent states. Rural electric cooperatives get 80 percent of their power from burning coal.

Next Thursday, the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, which utilities pay to run the electric grid in the region, is scheduled to present its transmission-cost-allocation plan to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. "Wind-farm operators had feared MISO would stick to its long-held proposal of having power generators pay for 20 percent of the cost for building the transmission lines from the wind farms to the grid. Consumers ... would have paid 80 percent," Evanoff reports. "Last month, however, MISO changed course. It tentatively proposed consumers handle the full 100 percent. This means households most likely will pay more than $2 per month." MISO was following the lead of the Southwest Power Pool, another regional operator, that won FERC approval for "spreading the full cost of building the transmission lines among that region's consumers."

Jamie Karnik, a spokesman for Wind on the Wires, a wind-developer lobby. told Evanoff, "It's not a matter of we don't want to pay this 20 percent. It's that we can't pay. It's too expensive." (Read more)