Ohio Supreme Court Clears Six Midwest Wind Farms to Sell Power in State

Six wind farms scattered across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa just won the legal right to sell their power into Ohio's renewable energy market, after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that regulators had done enough to prove the electricity could actually reach the state. The decision, issued on August 18, upholds certifications the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio granted to the six facilities, all subsidiaries of Avangrid Renewables LLC.

Ohio law requires out-of-state renewable energy facilities to prove their power is deliverable into Ohio before they can qualify for the state's renewable energy certificate market, and a challenger called Carbon Solutions Group argued Avangrid had not met that bar. As Columbus Underground reports, Carbon Solutions Group represents Ohio clean energy suppliers and challenged only whether Avangrid had proven the wind energy could be delivered to Ohio, arguing PUCO had not acted appropriately in certifying the six entities. The Ohio Supreme Court reviewed PUCO reports and testimony concerning deliverability before siding with the commission.

Tenth District Court of Appeals Judge Julia Dorrian, sitting for Justice Jennifer Brunner, wrote the majority opinion. Dorrian said PUCO had addressed its reasoning and the facts on which it relied, and the majority found the evidence supported PUCO's deliverability findings and recommendations. Justices Sharon Kennedy, Patrick DeWine, Megan Shanahan and Dan Hawkins joined that opinion, according to the same report.

How PUCO Tests Whether Wind Power Can Reach Ohio

None of the six wind farms — Moraine Wind LLC, Rugby Wind LLC, Elm Creek II Wind LLC, Buffalo Ridge II Wind LLC, Barton Windpower LLC and Barton Windpower 1 LLC — connect directly to Ohio, and all six sit outside the state, in noncontiguous territory served by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator grid rather than Ohio's PJM Interconnection footprint. To bridge that gap, PUCO uses a commission-adopted test, established in the 2011 case *In re Koda Energy LLC*, that relies on distribution factor power-flow modeling from MISO and PJM to gauge how much a given wind farm's output would affect Ohio's transmission lines, per Court News Ohio.

Carbon Solutions Group pointed to cover letters attached to PJM power-flow studies stating that energy “would be expected to flow” into the grid if the wind farms were to deliver their energy into PJM, arguing that language proved only hypothetical transmission rather than actual physical deliverability. The group also argued the deliverability test itself had been erroneously applied, though it did not argue that the test was unreasonable on its face, and it separately contended Avangrid failed to meet Ohio's certification criteria overall, according to Columbus Underground's account of the case. PUCO, for its part, said the deliverability requirement had been met and approved the certifications for three different reasons.

A Sharp Dissent Over the Record

Justice Patrick Fischer agreed with part of the majority decision but dissented from its core conclusion, arguing the majority exceeded its appellate authority in affirming PUCO's order and that the record lacked sufficient evidence to support the commission's decision. Fischer also argued the majority opinion ignored what he characterized as PUCO's clear violation of state record-keeping law. Justice John Williamowski, sitting for Justice Joe Deters, joined Fischer's dissent.

The majority, meanwhile, found that the PUCO record did not show misapprehension, mistake, or willful disregard of duty, and the court held that future cases may still consider further electricity-load studies or other necessary evidence — while declining to set a precedent requiring such studies in this one. Effectively, the ruling leaves it up to PUCO to determine whether its own tests prove energy can be delivered to Ohio, rather than locking in a stricter evidentiary standard going forward.

Why Ohio Leans on Out-of-State Wind

The case underscores how dependent Ohio's renewable energy market has become on power generated elsewhere. Ohio's 2014 wind turbine setback law more than doubled the required distance between turbines and adjacent property lines, a change that has blocked over 3.3 gigawatts of utility-scale wind development inside the state, according to Canary Media. Senate Bill 52, enacted in 2021, compounded the squeeze by giving county commissioners the power to create exclusion zones or veto individual wind and solar projects outright, as detailed by Inside Climate News.

Those in-state hurdles help explain why Ohio utilities, including FirstEnergy's operating companies, routinely run competitive requests for proposals seeking hundreds of thousands of certified out-of-state renewable energy certificates to satisfy the state's alternative energy mandates. A 2017 legislative change to Ohio Revised Code 4928.64 removed a prior rule requiring at least half of a utility's renewable benchmark to come from in-state generation, opening the door for 100% of that compliance to come from out-of-state facilities that can prove deliverability — the very question at the heart of this case.

The ruling also lands as Ohio grapples with rising electricity rates and surging power demand tied to rapid data center construction in central Ohio, pressures that have pushed state leaders and grid operators to secure available power resources while trying to shield retail customers from higher bills. Hoodline previously reported on efforts to make data centers cover costs as that demand growth strains the grid. The article was originally reported by Ohio Capital Journal writer Susan Tebben and republished by Columbus Underground under its Ohio Politics and Energy & Utilities coverage.