Yesterday, the Alliance filed a letter before the Iowa Utilities Board supporting a proposed rider by MidAmerican Energy on standby rates imposed by the utility on distributed generators, including those providing combined heat and power (CHP).
While standby rates are needed to allow utilities to recover costs they incur to provide supplemental, backup and maintenance service, many utilities (including MidAmerican) have historically erected undue hurdles by assessing standby rates that far exceed actual costs and by imposing penalties (or “ratchets”) that remain long after an outage. The Proposed Rider removes many of these barriers, creating new opportunities for CHP and waste heat to power deployment in Iowa.
You can find a copy of the filed letter here.
