American Electric seeks to build largest wind farm in US

Bloomberg

On the gusty Oklahoma Panhandle, a fight is escalating over a $4.5 billion wind power project that stands to reshape the way Americans pay for clean energy.
Across 300,000 acres (121,206 hectares) utility giant American Electric Power Co. is trying to pull off something no other company has attempted at this scale: It wants to build the nation’s largest wind farm — and it wants up-front guarantees from regulators that customers will pay the bill.
The plan calls for tapping a financial model that utilities have long used to build nuclear, coal- and natural gas-fired plants: by tacking costs — plus a profit — onto customers’ bills. More recently it’s become a popular way to build wind and solar farms. But American Electric is testing the limits by asking regulators in four states for permission to use the strategy for a sprawling project almost twice the size of Singapore.
If American Electric fails in its quest, an entire industry that’s counting on the model for growth may suffer a blow, said Alex Morgan, a wind energy analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. At that point, she said, “Maybe the next step is smaller projects.”
American Electric is already having a tough time securing approvals. Critics have assailed the project as a potential boondoggle, saying customers could be stuck with the bill if things fall apart. In February, an administrative law judge in Oklahoma advised state regulators to reject American Electric’s request. The company also needs approval from the three other states where it wants to recoup costs from customers: Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas.
Kit Konolige, a utilities analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, cautioned it’s too early to count out the project, called Wind Catcher.