Electric company drops plans for $4.5B wind farm

Texas officials rejected proposal to provide clean energy, saying it wouldn’t benefit customers

Because Texas regulators did not approve the project, Southwestern Electric Power Co. has abandoned plans for a $4.5 billion Oklahoma wind farm that would have served Texarkana.

The Texas Public Utilities Commission rejected SWEPCO’s 800-turbine Wind Catcher project Thursday. It had been approved by the Arkansas Public Service Commission, Louisiana Public Service Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. A decision was pending at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

“I don’t believe that the benefits are there for the ratepayers,” Commission Chairperson DeAnn Walker said before voting against the project, according to a Wall Street Journal report. “The benefits are based on a lot of assumptions that are questionable.”

The head of SWEPCO’s parent company, American Electric Power, expressed dismay at the commission’s decision, made only weeks after a public relations push touted the project’s positive economic and environmental effects.

“We are disappointed that we will not be able to move

forward with Wind Catcher, which was a great opportunity to provide more clean energy, lower electricity costs and a more diverse energy resource mix for our customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas,” said Nicholas K. Akins, AEP chairman, president and chief executive officer, in a news release.

“To realize the full benefits of Wind Catcher for customers, timely approvals were required from all jurisdictions so we could complete the project by the end of 2020 and be eligible for 100 percent of the federal production tax credit,” Akins said.

SWEPCO had cited federal tax credits earmarked to support renewable energy production, as well as eliminating fuel cost, as means to save customers more than $4 billion over Wind Catcher’s 25-year projected lifespan.

SWEPCO would have owned 70 percent of the Wind Catcher project, and its sister firm Public Service Co. of Oklahoma would have owned 30 percent.

AEP plans “to invest $24 billion through 2021 to rebuild and enhance aging infrastructure, add advanced technologies to the energy system, and create a more reliable and resilient grid to enhance service for customers,” according to the release.