National Wind plans 150-megawatt wind energy project
From Finance and Commerce
By Bob Geiger
March 16, 2009
Minneapolis-based National Wind LLC plans to develop a 150-megawatt wind energy project in Big Stone County, and has opened an Ortonville office to foster community involvement in the project, called Little Rock Wind LLC.
The announcement signals a partnership between National, a well-funded wind developer with 4,000 megawatts of existing or planned wind-energy projects in seven states, and Big Stone Wind LLC, an Ortonville-based wind-energy partnership.
Erin Edholm, a spokeswoman for National Wind LLC, said her company plans to build a “community wind” project similar in business model to National Wind LLC’s other generation facilities. That model involves raising seed capital from local investors and offering land owners a blend of turbine lease payments and revenue from wind-generated electricity purchased by a utility.
National Wind LLC has offered investors state-held securities in several other projects, allowing investors to purchase additional project shares in hopes of selling the securities at a profit in the future.
When finished, the Little Rock Wind LLC project is expected to cover 15,000 acres of farmland dotted with 100 1.5-megawatt General Electric wind turbines.
Brent Olson, a Big Stone County commissioner and board member of Big Stone Wind LLC, has been named founder of Little Rock Wind LLC’s board.
Olson hopes the project will provide economic security for the sparsely populated county, which is situated on the Minnesota-South Dakota border.
The Big Stone Wind LLC group originally planned a smaller, 20-megawatt wind-energy project in the region, but those plans were nearly derailed when investors discovered they would have to pay more than $500,000 for a feasibility study of connecting their wind-generated renewable energy to the power grid.
Some $335,000 of that $500,000 represented engineering contracting costs from Fergus Falls-based Otter Tail Power Co., lead investor in a utility group that wants to build the controversial 500-megawatt coal-fired electric plant called Big Stone II just 10 miles southwest of Milbank, S.D.
By teaming with National Wind, and by spreading the $500,000 cost over a larger group of investors, Big Stone Power can now proceed with its plans to generate wind energy in the region.
National Wind LLC has dispatched Jesse Hopkins-Hoel, a field specialist for the wind developer, to help the project’s advisory board increase the number of participating land owners.
The project is National Wind LLC’s sixth Minnesota wind development in a project portfolio that totals 1,168 megawatts of wind-energy potential in the state.
At the end of 2008, Minnesota ranked fourth among states in online wind-power generation with 1,752 megawatts, according to the American Wind Energy Association.