US wind farms under probe over output data

New York

A MARKET watchdog is trying to determine if wind farms in the US Midwest intentionally inflated their production forecasts so they would get paid for supply cuts they didn't make.

"We're investigating whether this behaviour is deliberate" and whether federal energy regulators "should be concerned", said David Patton, president of Potomac Economics Ltd, the consulting group contracted to monitor power markets in the region, who said his findings so far are preliminary. Wind generators are entitled to payments for curbing output when the region's flooded with electricity that it can't handle. "Forecast errors will happen naturally because you can never predict things perfectly, but it should not be the case that the errors are heavily skewed in one direction," Mr Patton said by phone.