Duke Energy Renewables Wind LLC (formerly known as DEGS Wind I LLC) and Apex Wind I LLC jointly on Dec. 30 asked the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to approve a transfer of authorizations related to a wind project.
They want the commission to: approve the transfer of the assets of the Spartan Windpower Project to Apex Wind; find that Apex Wind possesses the technical, managerial, and financial capability to construct, own, operate and finance the project; decline to exercise jurisdiction with respect to a state requirement that records be kept within the state; and find that Apex Wind will continue to meet the criteria for succeeding to and succeeds to all of the terms and conditions of the commission’s previous orders of declination of jurisdiction with respect to the project.
The project is in Newton County, Ind. The commission, in a March 2010 order, declined jurisdiction over this project as a public utility and authorized Duke Wind to construct and operate the project.
Duke Wind is a wholly owned subsidiary of Duke Energy Renewables, with Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) its ultimate parent. Apex Wind is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apex Clean Energy Holdings LLC.
Duke Wind will cause the sale of all of the real estate leases and associated zoning and other permits running with the land for the project to Apex Wind before the end of 2013, said the Dec. 30 application. If the commission does not approve the transfer of the project assets to Apex Wind, Duke Wind will buy back the leases from Apex Wind.
The March 2010 commission decision in this case said this project would be 100 MW in size initially, with a long-term plan for a total of 185 MW of capacity.
The Apex Clean Energy website said that the Charlottesville, Va.-based company has a number of completed and in-development wind projects. In December 2012, Apex completed construction of the 300-MW Canadian Hills Wind project in Oklahoma. Earlier that year, commercial operation of Apex’s solar facilities in Colorado commenced. The company said it is now developing several thousand megawatts of wind and solar projects around the country. Prior to the formation of Apex in 2009, the management team had collectively developed, financed, constructed and managed more than $10bn in operating renewable energy facilities totaling nearly 10,000 MW of capacity.
