The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and Wind on the Wires (WOW) filed a protest last week with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) opposing a proposal by the utility transmission system operator in the Midwest that, if approved, will discourage the development of wind resources in a region that has been termed “the Saudi Arabia of wind.”

According to the filing, the proposal takes a major step backward from creating the regulatory framework needed to advance these objectives, by seeking cost allocation provisions that would result in the hindrance, not the promotion, of transmission required for the delivery of wind generation.

"Midwest ISO's current cost allocation rules produce, in limited circumstances, inequitable results for a few transmission owners. In particular, they maintain that the existing cost allocation method can introduce a high cost allocation to a small group of transmission owners with facilities in the vicinity of, but whose load is not proportionally benefited by, network upgrades necessary to accommodate interconnection requests," AWEA stated.

Slowing down wind energy development in the Midwest, the two groups said, harms states’ ability to achieve their renewable energy requirements and create green jobs, and renders it virtually impossible to meet the President’s goal of doubling renewable energy in three years.

According to AWEA, the proposed change would nearly double the cost for a wind plant to connect to the power system in the Upper Midwest, potentially forcing many wind plant developers to pull the plug on tens of billions of dollars of investment they have planned for the region. Instead of broadly distributing the costs of transmission in a way that matches the broadly distributed benefits of building a stronger grid--such as improved reliability and reduced power prices--the proposal would assign virtually all those costs to the next generator attempting to connect to the grid.

“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.