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Land Resources / News / Minnesota
Wisconsin group intends to buy half of Minnesota wind farm
Source: Finance-Commerce.com, by Bob Geiger
March 13, 2008 
As part of a drive to generate 10 percent of electricity from renewable resources by 2015, Wisconsin Public Service Corp. on Friday is expected to announce it plans to acquire part of a southeastern Minnesota wind farm.
Green Bay, Wis.-based Wisconsin Public Service Corp. (WPSC) officials plan to announce at a news conference at the Oaks Country Club in Hayfield, Minn., a letter of intent to acquire a 150-megawatt portion of the High Country Wind Energy Park, a wind farm located in Dodge and Olmsted counties. In September 2007, Minnea-polis-based wind energy developer National Wind LLC announced that it planned to develop High Country as a community-owned wind project. Under this business model, participating landowners get majority ownership of the wind farm. When fully built out, the High Country development will produce 300 megawatts. In February, National Wind announced on its website that it had been negotiating with “a regional utility” to acquire part of the development. WPSC was that utility. Terms of WPSC’s development and energy purchase agreement were not disclosed. But generally, putting in the infrastructure (turbines) to produce wind energy costs $2 million for every megawatt, which in this case would put WPSC’s cost at around $300 million. WPSC is part of Chicago-based Integrys Energy Group Inc., a $6.9 billion utilities company that provides electricity and natural gas to customers in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. This deal comes at a time when state governments increasingly are seeking renewable energy sources to lessen the impact of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. In March 2006, Wisconsin lawmakers passed legislation requiring state utilities to provide at least 10 percent of power from renewable sources by the year 2015. Minnesota echoed that legislation in 2007, when Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed legislation requiring utilities to produce at least 25 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2025. The law signed by Pawlenty contains a higher renewable energy percentage, 30 percent, for Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy Corp., which supplies about half of Minnesota’s energy. Both Minnesota and Wisconsin are among the 20 states ranked highest in potential wind energy generation, the largest renewable energy resource. According to the Washington, D.C.-based American Wind Energy Association, Wisconsin ranks 18th nationally with an estimated annual wind production capacity of 58 billion kilowatt hours per year. Minnesota ranks ninth, with an estimated 657 billion kilowatt hours a year – more than 11 times the potential wind energy capacity of Wisconsin. Minnesota’s potential wind energy is greater than Wisconsin because it has a great deal of prairie land along the state’s southern and western borders with Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota. At the end of 2007, Minnesota wind farms were generating 1,299 megawatts of wind power, more than 24 times the 53 megawatts generated by similar developments in Wisconsin. Following development of the High Country Wind Energy Park, power from the wind farm will be plugged into an electrical power grid via an eight-mile transmission line. Electricity from the project’s first phase will then be wired to WPSC customers in central and northwest Wisconsin and part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Read the complete article from Finance-Commerce.com » |
