A MidAmerican Energy vice president said Monday that the utility would prefer to build its own wind turbine farms rather than buy renewable power from another source.

"It's much like the advantages of owning a home rather than renting," MidAmerican vice president Dean Crist said.

Crist was speaking on the first day of an Iowa Utilities Board Hearing on MidAmerican's proposal to add another 1,001 megawatts of wind generation to the 1,000 megawatts it already has in the state.

Rival wind generator NextEra Energy of Florida, which has 800 megawatts of wind generation in Iowa, has objected to the MidAmerican proposal, saying it would be anticompetitive and that MidAmerican's real purpose is less to serve its customers than to sell excess electricity in the wholesale markets.

MidAmerican has acknowledged that it doesn't need more electric generation now, but Crist said "our customers benefit from our wholesale sales."

He reminded the board that MidAmerican has pledged to freeze its retail electricity rates through the end of 2013.

Crist said that MidAmerican has asked for an allowable 12.2 percent rate of return on equity for the project so that it can proceed to take advantages of a surplus of turbines now and also tax benefits accruing to wind generation.

NextEra has protested that if MidAmerican is granted permission to build more wind generation that it would, in the words of NextEra vice president Michael O'Sullivan, put a "chilling effect" on future outside investment in wind generation in Iowa.

Under questioning from attorneys for NextEra and others, Crist said "to say that for us to build another 1,000 megawatts of wind generation would prevent someone else from building more wind generation in Iowa, I don't agree."

MidAmerican hasn't said where the wind turbines will be located.