By Chris O’Malley

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week denied a request to reinstate a generator interconnection agreement terminated by MISO last year after a wind developer failed to make milestone payments.

The commission denied Shetek Wind’s request to rehear an order it issued last October accepting MISO’s termination of the GIA (ER14-2681).

That agreement, which included transmission owner Northern States Power, provided up to 146.6 MW of interconnection service to Northern States’ Garvin, Minn., substation.

In October, FERC found that Shetek failed to meet milestone payments under the GIA and that extending the milestones without assurance that the developer would meet its obligations would present “harm to lower-queued interconnection customers in the form of uncertainty, cascading restudies and shifted costs necessitated if the project were to be removed from the queue at a later date.”

Northern States parent Xcel Energy said that since signing the agreement in 2007, Shetek had made no progress toward development.

Shetek’s plan was to install up to 60 turbines near Tracy, Minn. In 2006, the developer reported that it had raised $470,000 in equity from almost 40 landowner-investors in the project’s targeted area.

The company was seeking an extension of time to make progress payments and argued that Northern States breached its obligations to act in good faith.

Shetek said FERC’s decision last year was not in the public interest because termination would frustrate Minnesota’s interest in supporting community-based projects.

But FERC noted that both the state’s Public Utilities Commission and its Court of Appeals found that Xcel was not required to give special consideration to the project.