Terry Kouba, a top power generation official at Alliant Energy, stopped by for a chat, and two things quickly became clear:

• Alliant Energy is moving to own more of its generation rather than buy so much from others, a move that is expected to help ease rate increases in the future. 
• The investor-owned utility plans to make big plays in renewable energy beyond the $1 billion wind energy project it announced this year. But you won’t see a proposal for a nuclear plant. 

Kouba, vice president for generation operations, said Alliant is marching away from coal, as most utilities are. With federal regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions expected to toughen with time, and natural gas prices expected to stay low, Alliant is refitting many of its coal plants to burn natural gas. By 2025, it plans to close Iowa coal plants (or former coal plants) in Dubuque, Marshalltown, Burlington, Prairie Creek near Cedar Rapids, and two units in Lansing. 

And while MidAmerican Energy has been far more aggressive in installing its own wind power, Alliant expects wind to be a big part of its new own-more, buy-less plan.

“We’re going to have more highly efficient gas production and more renewables, whereas in the past we had more coal generation,” Kouba said. 

The result of using wind should be a better bottom line that will help ease rate increases. 

“When you look at the cost benefit of the fuel, which is free, and the production tax credit, and the revenue we’ll get from selling power from that, the benefits outweigh the cost over the 40-year life cycle of the project,” Kouba said. 

Among the company’s bigger projects will be a 500-megawatt, $1 billion array of wind turbines spread across Franklin County and possibly other areas. It will add to the utility’s purchased wind power and the wind farms it already owns in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.

“The 500 megawatts is a super project that just shows how we are trying to change the balance in our generating fleet,” Kouba said of the wind development, which will come online in phases in 2019-20.

Another big project, the combined cycle natural gas plant at Marshalltown, will begin production in the middle of next year. The $700 million project now under construction by general contractor KBR of Houston and some 800 construction workers uses waste heat to generate power, adding efficiency to natural gas that is already more efficient than coal. 

The combination of using gas plants and wind is particularly attractive because gas plants can be adjusted quickly to meet needs when wind energy falls off, Kouba said, much quicker than coal plants could. 

Kouba said Alliant is proposing an unusual arrangement in which it would file a rate case later, after it gets a good idea of the fuel savings and the effect of the production tax credit. There won’t be an immediate rate increase related to the wind project.

Nuclear won’t be in the mix, he said. “We don’t anticipate building any nuclear,” though Alliant does buy power from the Duane Arnold plant at Palo, which it once owned.

Regarding solar, Kouba said Alliant will pursue its own solar developments along with allowing individual customers to hook up — something that environmental groups have said utilities are resisting through actions at the Iowa Utilities Board.

“If people want to install their own solar installations at their farms or wherever and want our assistance, we’ll assist them,” Kouba said. “But we also have to plan that well, because too much penetration of solar on particular circuits causes all kinds of problems out there. Because you can get too much of it and it’s fluctuating energy, which can cause voltage fluctuations and can cause problems for other customers.

“We are not against solar. Solar is going to get more and more efficient. It’s relatively easy for customers to get installed or to install themselves. Because it is getting more efficient, it is getting more economical. We want to understand extremely well how to build it and own it and operate it, because at scale we think it is going to be more beneficial to customers than every little rooftop installation out there.”