Key test for wind farm

The fight over whether the country's first offshore wind farm should be built off Cape Cod moves today to a Boston hearing room, where the project's future turns on one question: Is the price of the electricity produced by the spinning turbines a good deal?

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities will decide whether National Grid's 15-year contract to buy half the turbines' power is good for ratepayers. Teams of lawyers will present and cross-examine witnesses over 12 days of hearings that have been previewed in hundreds of pages of written testimony.

Rejection of the contract would be a huge blow to Cape Wind. The 130-turbine project, planned for Nantucket Sound, is estimated to cost at least $2 billion. To attract needed financing, Cape Wind must show investors that it has customers for its power. The company also must begin construction by the end of the year to qualify for key federal tax credits, and it can't do so if it doesn't secure the contract.

National Grid has agreed to pay 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour in the first year of Cape Wind's operation, with a 3.5 percent annual cost increase. The starting price is more than twice what the utility pays today for power from nonrenewable sources.

"It's undeniable that Cape Wind is not cost-effective when you compare it to market rates, or you compare it to other renewable energy," said Audra Parker of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a Cape Wind opponent.