An Illinois developer has delayed construction of its 175-MW, $300 million-plus Sugar Creek Wind project in Logan County, Illinois, by at least two years due to general economic and financial uncertainty, a company official said late Wednesday.
With the possibility increasing that Congress will not renew the federal production tax credit for renewable energy projects scheduled to expire at the end of 2012, "it doesn't make much sense to build it in 2013," said Stan Komperda, head of project development for American Wind Energy Management.
"If the PTC doesn't come back, there's always the potential for the economy to turn around," he said, adding it would also help wind developers like Springfield, Illinois-based AWEM if natural gas prices continued to rise. That is because many electric utilities have eschewed both wind and coal power to switch, at least temporarily, to cheaper gas-fired generation.
AWEM also has plans to build a 200-MW Sugar Creek Wind II project in the area, and it has proposed two wind farms totaling about 200 MW in Sangamon County, Illinois, where the state capital, Springfield, is located.
Komperda said AWEM has teamed up with California-based Oak Creek Energy on the Illinois projects. In 2006, Oak Creek negotiated a power purchase agreement with Southern California Edison to deliver 1,550 MW of wind energy to the utility.
