December 10, 2007
Delaware
Delaware
Bluewater Wind has reduced its proposed selling price of wind power by about 10 percent, but Delmarva Power is still refusing to agree to a 25-year power purchase agreement.
Nevertheless, the Public Service Commission today released a proposed contract between the two parties. Four state agencies will decide on Dec. 18 whether to force Delmarva to sign it.
The proposed contract pegs the price of wind power at 9.893 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s down from 10.59 cents per kilowatt hour in the contract Bluewater submitted in September.
In forming the contract, mediator Lawrence Hamermesh exercised his new powers as an arbitrator, which allowed him to decide some of the details of the contract if Bluewater and Delmarva were unable to come to an agreement.
In his cover letter to the contract, Hamermesh wrote: “While it is labeled an ‘agreement,’ and Bluewater has indicated that it is prepared to enter into that agreement, I wish to make clear there are important aspects of it which Delmarva opposes, and there is therefore no mutually acceptable PPA at this point.”
PPA stands for power purchase agreement.
Hamermesh wrote that on Wednesday, he would submit a summary of the issues “on which it was necessary for me to specify a resolution to be embodied in the agreement, and my rationales for resolving them as I did.”
The price for Delmarva to buy renewable energy credits remains unchanged at $19.75 per credit.
The proposed project remains 11.5 miles east of Rehoboth Beach, and Delmarva would be obligated to still buy up to 300 megawatts of electricity from Bluewater at any given time.
By Aaron Nathans
The News Journal
10 December 2007
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/12/10/bluewater-wind-price-cut-but-delmarva-power-still-balks/