Saving Iowans “An Incredible Amount of Money”

We wrote yesterday about Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s support for nuclear energy. It looks like the legislature there is about to act on that support:

The chairman of the Iowa House commerce committee says there's enough support to move a bill that sets out how a new nuclear power plant would be built in the state.

"I still sense there's a lot of support on this bill, especially because there are concerns with a lack of new (energy) generation in this state," said Rep. Chuck Soderberg, R-Le Mars.

That’s from today, so we should know soon how it goes. This story doesn’t actually explain the bill. This one does:

The Iowa Legislature would have to pass a bill to allow the change in energy rates because MidAmerican, even though it's a privately-owned company, doesn't have the authority to set its own rates -- instead regulators set the prices the company can charge, Fehrman said.

At first, I thought this was to implement CWIP - Construction Work in Progress – which allows utilities to charge ratepayers a nominal amount extra to pay for a power plant while it is being built (which benefits customers because it saves on finance charges accrued during construction) and it is, sort of.

This discussion follows a law passed last year that allowed MidAmerican to charge customers a total of $15 million to pay for a three-year study looking into the viability of building a nuclear plant in Iowa.

So, presumably, the company wants to do this without taking out a loan, which would cost customers more.

"Any money that customers pay up front -- it could be a small percentage increase -- but in the long run it will save the customers an incredible amount of money if we can get nuclear done," [state Sen. Randy] Feenstra said.

Yes, that’s CWIP, though not exactly for a construction project.

So, early days for this effort. But with the governor on-board, it’ll be interesting to see if this passes both houses in the next weeks. Fingers crossed.

It’s a barn and windmill – hey! – in Iowa.

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