US electric utility American Electric Power (AEP) is proceeding with its $2bn North Central wind power complex in Oklahoma despite a high-profile failure to win regulatory approval in Texas where a subsidiary planned to deliver 309MW of capacity to state customers.

The near-1.5GW North Central will comprise a trio of wind farms: the 999MW Traverse, the nation’s second largest single-site onshore project under construction, as well as 287MW Maverick and 199MW Sundance. All three will be equipped with GE turbines.

AEP subsidiaries Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) and Southwestern Electric Power (SWEPCo) will acquire the projects from developer Invenergy upon their completion.

PSO will acquire 675MW capacity for its customers in Oklahoma and will recover the $906m in costs that include grid upgrade and interconnection from the rate base.

With Texas now out of North Central, SWEPCo will acquire the remaining 810MW capacity for $1.09bn and allocate it as follows: Louisiana (464MW), Arkansas (268MW) and wholesale customers in those locations (78MW). Full power is slated to be flowing by 2021.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC), in its 16-page order, obtained by Recharge, said SWEPCo would have excess electric power capacity on its system until 2026, making the wind farms unnecessary. With no need for the facilities to serve retail load, their addition “will not improve service,” the PUC’s three commissioners wrote.

They said that SWEPCo did not demonstrate that “under a reasonable range of assumptions” its acquisition of the wind farms would provide benefits to the utility customers in east Texas, faulting the company for criteria it used for a 44.01% capacity factor estimate and noting SWEPCo did not show the wind farms would have an extended useful life of 30 years.

“We are disappointed that our SWEPCo customers in Texas will not be able to benefit from the low-cost wind energy the North Central projects will provide,” said AEP CEO Nick Akins. The Columbus, Ohio-based utility holding company has estimated North Central will save its customers $3bn over the next three decades.

The PUC’s decision is the second major setback for AEP in three years in Texas, the top US wind state with almost 30GW installed capacity. In 2018, commissioners rejected the company’s $4.5bn Wind Catcher development as not being in consumers’ interest, forcing AEP to pull the plug on the project.

Wind

AEP presses ahead with $2bn US wind complex despite Texas snub