Jun. 7--Although the wind often changes direction, policies governing wind energy should be consistent, energy company representatives said yesterday at Windpower 2006, the four-day conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center that ends today.

That consistency, utility company spokesmen said, will come as states learn to think regionally -- something they should seek to do, because the alternative is greater federal regulation.

"States don't like the feds telling them what to do," said Frank Prager, managing director of environmental policy for Xcel Energy Inc, a Minneapolis-based electricity and natural gas company.

A big part of the more consistent regulatory policies the utilities would like to see among states would be a greater use of energy credits that states with more wind could sell to those with less.

"Electricity knows no state boundaries. Some states are just going to be better producing states," and should be able to transfer credits to less well-producing states, said Audrey Zibelman, chief operating officer of PJM Interconnection LLC, the regional company that provides the wholesale marketplace for electricity in Pennsylvania and 12 other states.

Representatives of utility companies also said the federal Protection Tax Credit, which was created in 1992 and has been renewed in two-year increments since 1997, should be renewed for a longer period of time.

Whatever policy changes occur need to happen soon, they said.

Dennis Welch, senior vice president for environment, safety and health at American Electric Power, cited the case of a 90-mile power line spanning the Virginia-West Virginia border that took 16 years to make operational because of citizen opposition and regulatory constraints. "We need people to meet us halfway," he said. "I don't think the economy can wait 16 years."

The third day of the country's largest-ever conference on wind power ended with an awards banquet at which Gov. Ed Rendell and state environmental protection secretary Katie McGinty, among others, were honored for "extraordinary and tireless support" of wind power.