Technical Status Report for US Wind Farmers Network
The theme of the work in this quarter was community-based wind and locally owned wind projects. The work Windustry has done is just beginning to touch the heart of the matter for a hugely interested audience of rural landowners and rural communities. We revised and published a Windustry Newsletter on two farmer owned wind projects called Minwind I and Minwind II. This article was largely researched and written last quarter but the principal individuals that organized the wind projects didn't want any more farmers calling them up than they already had, so they urged us to put a hold on the article or not publish it. This presented a unique problem for Windustry. Up to this point, we had not dealt with generating too much attention for a wind energy project. The story of a group of farmers and individuals pooling their resources for two locally owned commercial-scale wind projects is very compelling and the organizers of the projects were getting a great deal of attention from other farmers that want more details on the project. However, the organizers committed a large amount of their own resources toward the set up of this project which took many hours with their legal counsel and they did not have the capacity or the desire to provide answers for all the other farmers and individuals who were requesting information. Windustry worked with the business entity and did not publish the newsletter until we resolved some of the problems with the high level of interest in this project. Windustry resolved to address this issue by creating a custom track in the state and regional wind energy conference held in Minneapolis, November 21-22, 2002. There were a few sessions in the Landowner and Citizen Workshops track that were specifically created to talk about the ''how-to's for rural landowners to put together their own projects. Also, the conference's Community-Based Wind track addressed what makes a good project and what moneylenders are looking for when they evaluate wind projects. All of this contributed to the general knowledge base for other farmers to understand what it takes to put together their own wind energy enterprise. In a limited way, Windustry is beginning to define, differentiate and explore new types of wind energy business models. A good initial step is defining community-based wind as projects that are publicly owned--by a municipality, a rural electric coop, a county, or public entity like a school system, or hospital or jail. Ultimately, this work will lead to new materials on wind energy business models for rural landowners and communities.
- Research Organization:
- Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG03-01SF22338
- OSTI ID:
- 807901
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 19 Feb 2003
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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