SALON

Sunday, Sep 30, 2012 7:45 PM UTC

MidAmerican to buy 2 Calif. wind farms

By

Topics: From the Wires,

MidAmerican Energy has agreed to buy two wind projects under construction about 120 miles north of Los Angeles from the wind developer Terra-Gen Power.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

The two projects, totaling 300 megawatts of peak electric capacity, will be part of the larger Alta Wind Energy Center located in Tehachapi, Calif., much of which is already in operation.

MidAmerican, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said Sunday it will sell the electricity to Southern California Edison under long-term power purchase agreements.

In typical conditions, the projects will produce enough electricity to meet the demand of about 80,000 homes.

MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. serves electric customers in Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota and Nebraska and it also controls a subsidiary called MidAmerican Renewables that operates wind, solar, geothermal and hydro-electric plants and sells that power to other utilities. Terra-Gen Power is a private company based in New York City.

Wind developers are scrambling to get wind projects underway this year in order to qualify for a federal wind subsidy that is slated to expire at the end of the year. President Barack Obama wants Congress to extend the subsidy but his Republican challenger Mitt Romney and some members of Congress want to allow it to lapse.

Wind power has struggled to compete in recent years because low natural gas prices have made reduced wholesale electric power prices, reducing the amount of revenue a wind turbine can generate. Without the federal subsidy, construction of wind projects is expected to slow dramatically, at least until power prices begin to rise.

The wind subsidy, known as the production tax credit, is worth $22 for every megawatt-hour of electricity generated by a wind farm during its first 10 years of operation. For MidAmerican’s new wind farms, that would amount to about $19 million per year, or $190 million in total.

More Jonathan Fahey.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations