An Anniversary of Sorts
Competitive Power Ventures isn’t quite the company its founders envisioned. Not that they’re complaining. I just spoke to CPV Senior Vice President Sean Finnerty today on what happens to be the 10th anniversary of the company’s founding. Headquartered in suburban Washington, D.C., the company was started by veterans of Pacific Gas & Electric when everyone thought deregulation was going to transform the power generation business. For a time, it did, with CPV developing a portfolio of natural gas plants in its first few years. “And then Enron happened,” Finnerty said, which dried up plant development but sent the company into a new direction of consulting and “crisis management” for operators of distressed assets. CPV took a few twists and turns along the way before it – twice – developed a large portfolio of wind projects across the country. By 2003 CPV started looking at wind power, not as a developer, but as a consultant, doing market analyses for a “major turbine manufacturer” that confidentiality agreements prevent his disclosing. By 2005, tapping its plant expertise and partnering with investors, it entered the development game for itself. Eventually, a venture between its former unit CPV Wind Ventures and ArcLight Capital Partners created a development portfolio of 3,500 megawatts in projects. That unit was sold to Spanish behemoth Iberdrola. In the past two-and-a-half years, CPV Renewable Energy Ventures has built up a new wind project development portfolio of at least 4,300 megawatts. It has made two major announcements in recent weeks: it signed a 20?year power?purchase agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority for 200 MW from its Ashley wind energy project in McIntosh County, North Dakota, with completion expected in 2012; a 20-year power-purchase agreement with Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company for its 152 MW Keenan II wind energy project in Woodward County, Oklahoma, was also signed. Both projects showed renewed interest by the financial community. Now the original piece of the business is benefitting from decisions by government and the power industry, and the general anti-coal policy environment that exists today. CPV never left the natural gas business, so recent policy decisions in California to encourage natural gas plants as a complement to mandated renewable energy. The 800-megawatt peaker plant, CPV Sentinel benefitted from recent legislation that transferred emissions credits to the plant. “This is in an area with a large wind presence around Palm Springs,” Finnerty said. The area has 600 megawatts of wind power and 150 megawatts under development. CPV has 5,000 megawatts of natural gas projects in development. Now, what’s the next big thing for this company? “Solar. Everybody wants to be in that now,” Finnerty said.
