BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) _ North Dakota regulators have granted Otter Tail Power Co.’s request for a special charge to cover its investment in a wind farm.
Otter Tail owns part of a new wind farm south of Langdon in northeastern North Dakota. The project is capable of generating 159 megawatts of electricity. Otter Tail gets 40.5 megawatts of the wind farm’s output.
Otter Tail asked for a special renewable energy charge to cover its share of the wind farm. North Dakota’s Public Service Commission has voted to grant it.
The charge will be listed separately on the bills of Otter Tail customers, starting in June. Otter Tail has about 57,000 North Dakota electric customers. It serves the cities of Wahpeton, Devils Lake and Jamestown.
Commissioner Tony Clark says the charge will be less expensive for Otter Tail’s customers. He says the utility could charge more if it bought wind power on the open market. Clark says it’s better for customers if Otter Tail owns the power source.
This is in addition to the federal subsidy for wind energy which I believe is 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour. That doesn’t sound like that huge of a subsidy when we’re paying something like 8 cents per kilowatt hour. (I’m not even sure what it is.) But most of that price is transmission and delivery costs. The power companies are probably only paying a couple cents for generating electricity. (If anyone knows I’d like to hear what it is.) (Update: I was looking at Minnkota Electric’s annual report and I think they were reporting that I was in the ballpark with 2 cents to generate a kilowatt hour. It depends on what plant)
Even with this huge subsidy that we’re paying for, Otter Tail customers are STILL going to have to pay extra to generate their power from wind. All of this for a computer model that hasn’t predicted the cold trend we’ve seen the last ten years.
We need to tell these politicians to keep out of what they don’t understand.
For the record I don’t hold this against Otter Tail and the Public Service Commission needed to allow this. But the government should quit threatening and actually carrying through their mandates and demands for something that is not competitive. It doesn’t hurt the power company. It hurts us.
Given that I do have to dig into Tony Clark. He says that this is cheaper than buying wind energy on the open market. So? It would be an heck of lot cheaper to not have the wind energy in the first place. Does the guy not understand that?