Central Maine Power (CMP) filed on Sept. 2 at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission a Notice of Termination of an Engineering and Procurement Agreement (E&P Agreement) between CMP and sister company Atlantic Wind LLC.
In December 2014, CMP submitted the E&P Agreement, which the commission later accepted. The E&P Agreement was executed to enable CMP to perform certain engineering and procurement activities for Atlantic Wind to construct the proposed 100-MW, 50-turbine Fletcher Mountain Wind Farm in Concord and Lexington townships in Somerset County, Maine.
Atlantic Wind and CMP are both indirect subsidiaries of Iberdrola USA and Iberdrola S.A. Due to that fact, this deal required approval of the Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC). CMP filed the E&P Agreement for MPUC approval in December 2014. On Aug. 5 of this year, the MPUC denied approval of the E&P Agreement. Based on the lack of required approval by the MPUC, CMP may not perform the engineering and procurement services set forth in the E&P Agreement. Consequently, CMP filed the Sept. 2 notice with FERC.
The Maine PUC, in that Aug. 5 order, said it is wary of inter-affiliate transactions like this. It wrote: “Specifically, given the lack of a track record that the services to be provided to Atlantic Wind have been, or would be, provided to non-affiliates, there exists the possibility that CMP is acting in a way that favors its affiliates which would be harmful to both the competitive market and to CMP’s ratepayers. Since there are no benefits to ratepayers as a result of the agreement and there is no reason why Atlantic Wind either itself or through another entity could not perform the service, we conclude that the standards of 35-A M.R.S. § 707 have not been satisfied and deny the request for approval of the proposed E&P Agreement between CMP and Atlantic Wind.”
