Battle over power blows in the wind

Most New Yorkers could care less about a ruling that an administrative law judge could make on the Iberdrola-Energy East merger as early as Friday.

But the decision could have huge implications for upstate New Yorkers and their energy usage.

Iberdrola SA is a Spanish utility that ranks as the world's largest developer of wind farms. The company is a 50 percent owner of the Maple Ridge Wind Farm in Lewis County, which at 321 megawatts is the largest wind farm in New York state.

Iberdrola wants to buy Energy East Corp., an electric and gas utility headquartered in Maine that has 1.3 million upstate New York customers through its New York State Electric & Gas and Rochester Gas & Electric subsidiaries.

But the merger has faced opposition from the Department of Public Service, the state agency that oversees utilities in New York.

Staff at the department, who provide guidance and recommendations to the five-person Public Service Commission that must ultimately approve or deny the merger, have argued that the deal does not provide the public with enough benefits and that it could cause disruption to the state's wholesale electric market.

Agency staff believe Iberdrola will hold too much sway over the state's wholesale electric market if it owns a substantial amount of generation in the state, which is why the company has been pushed to sell Energy East's power plants and divest itself of its wind business in New York.

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