Hoosiers may bear $16B cost of transporation for wind energy

From an article by Ted Evanoff in the Indianapolis Star:

The rural Midwest is booming with wind turbines these days -- but guess who's going to pay the $16 billion it will cost to move all that clean electricity to the cities that need it?

Probably you.

Officials are trying to figure out how much wind developers should pay to build the transmission lines to get their energy to market. But because other regions have shifted the entire cost to utility rate payers, the Midwest officials likely will feel pressure to do the same.

If they don't, industry analysts say, it could hurt the development of green energy in the region.

The Midwest -- with its heavy reliance on coal-fired power plants -- can ill-afford that, as federal regulations clamp down on carbon emissions.
Over the next few years, the development of wind energy could cost Indiana households more than $40 million per year, adding at least $2 per month on average to the typical bill for the state's 1.5 million homes.

The new cash would help pay for about $16 billion worth of new transmission lines that wind developers say are needed. The lines would move wind energy into the electric grid -- the interlaced power lines that tie utilities into a massive network.

Paying for the new lines raises an issue of fairness because households in, say, Indianapolis could subsidize electricity made by North Dakota wind turbines and used in cities such as Milwaukee, Chicago or Fort Wayne, experts say.

That could happen because the electric grid that covers Indiana is monitored by a Carmel-based nonprofit organization whose territory includes a wide swath from Ohio to the Dakotas.