When you first read the account, the extra amount seems small until you do the relative math. The electric Company had to pay 10.4 million for this unusable power and distributed the cost amongst its 203,000 plus customers.
This is a huge customer base that this particular electric Company in the following article has to distribute this cost too. On the other hand though, we are in an area where we are nowhere as densely populated and costs like this will have to be divided amongst a much smaller base. This simply means that this government welfare to wind companies will be paid for by just a few.
If the wind company only is going to pay us 160,000 a year, divided amongst the approximate 1500 taxpayers in our Town, that amounts to a meager $9.00 per month per taxpayer. Has any of our Town Government considered how much our electric bill is going to go up a month to subsidize this welfare program? $5 … $10 … $15? … Who knows?
Come on Town Board … WAKE UP AND HELP YOUR PEOPLE BEFORE IT IS TO LATE!
News Article
Xcel customers pay for wind energy not transmitted
The typical Xcel Energy customer paid an extra *$3.20 cents a month to the utility company for wind power the company paid for but couldn't transmit from wind farms from February 2004 to May 2005, the state Commerce Department said.
June 3, 2006 by Associated Press in In Forum
The Commerce Department report said Xcel paid developers about $10.4 million for wind-generated electricity that it couldn't accept. Those costs - called "curtailment payments" - are passed directly to Xcel electricity customers. The Commerce Department said the typical residential customer paid $3.20 during the 16-month period.
Wind farm owners are guaranteed payments by Xcel whenever their machines produce electricity, even though the utility doesn't have enough transmission lines to deliver all the power to consumers. Because of those guarantees, wind machines have sometimes been disconnected on the windiest days when the most power could be generated.
Xcel officials said curtailment payments are unavoidable because it takes just a few months to build a large wind farm but requires several years to build the transmission lines to move the power the farm produces. However, state officials were surprised by the size of the 2004 payments. "Am I impatient that we don't have more transmission? Yes," said the Commerce Department's deputy commissioner, Edward Garvey. "But I also understand why there aren't more wires in the air."
The payments have been made to the developers of five large wind farms in the Buffalo Ridge area of southwestern Minnesota. In early 2004, Xcel could accept only about 56 percent of the 466 megawatts of electricity the ridge could generate. The wind farm developers set up a rotation system in which they took turns turning off their generators or otherwise reducing output. "We are doing the best job that we can, as far as trying to stay ahead of the curve," said Stephen Wilson, an Xcel analyst of the program.
By late 2004, the utility had upgraded part of its system to handle more power, so the curtailment payments for 2005 significantly dropped. Wind-industry advocates argue that Xcel should have moved move quickly to build and upgrade transmission lines because it has known since the mid- to late 1990s that laws required it to provide substantial amounts of wind energy over the next decade "If we're paying too much in curtailment payments and are basically dumping the wind, maybe there should be a tipping point at which utilities can't get reimbursed from customers," said Beth Soholt, director of Wind on the Wires, a nonprofit organization in St. Paul that focuses on wind-energy issues.
In April, the utility's rate regulator, Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, also expressed concern. The curtailment payments were supposed to be temporary, but turned out to be longer and larger than state officials anticipated. The commission decided that Xcel may continue charging customers for the costs, but ordered it to submit monthly reports on the payments and to project what they will be during the next five years. Xcel responded two weeks ago. It reported that because two or three new wind farms will be added to the system this year and next, the utility will again have more wind-generated power than it can accept.
Xcel estimated that curtailment payments will be about $8.5 million in 2006 and $10 million in 2007.
Web Site: See Article on the Web
*corrected typo (see body of article)
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