In an agreement with attorney general Martha Coakley, Cape Wind Associates and utility National Grid have agreed to lower the price from $0.207 to $0.187 per kWh,
In return, Coakley recommended that the Department of Public Utilities approve the project’s power purchase agreement (PPA), which covers half the project’s 468MW capacity. She has also abandoned efforts to force the companies to disclose profit and cost projections.
Coakley said the two cent drop in purchase price will save Massachusetts ratepayers up to $456 million during the 15-year contract lifespan.
But Canadian power company TransCanada is bidding to halt the PPA’s process. The company says it should have been allowed to bid for a National Grid PPA, and that the utility’s procurement process was "deeply flawed".
TransCanada last week filed a similar motion with Rhode Island’s public utilities commission. That case revolves around National Grid’s PPA with Deepwater Wind for the 20MW Block Island wind farm.
In both cases, TransCanada said, it could have supplied cheaper electricity from its Kibby Wind Farm in Maine.
Other companies to have raised concerns about the PPA prior to the agreement with Coakley include retail giant Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart said that while it agreed with the concept of wind power, it was concerned that the higher costs of electricity would be passed onto customers.
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