Blackford moving quickly to secure wind developer
6/4/2010
By Cynthia Payne
NT Editor/Publisher
newstimes@comcast.net
Published:
Wednesday,
June 2, 2010 6:08 AM CDT
Moving quickly on establishing a wind
farm in Blackford County is near the top of the priority list for Rob
Cleveland, executive director of the Blackford County Economic Development
Corp.
Coming back from the American Wind Energy Association’s 2010
WindPower conference in Dallas, Texas, last week, Cleveland has plans to meet
with several companies and developers with which he made contact within the
next couple of weeks to discuss options.
“I would love to get something going,” Cleveland said.
“We need to do it quickly because there are other
developments around us going on and because it takes so long, 18 months to 2
years, to get up and running,” he noted.
At
the same time, he added, due diligence is important. “I do think we need to be
very cautious,” he added.
There are two hurdles that must be crossed before a wind company would
be interested and Blackford County likely is situated to meet those. They are,
first, does the wind blow, or do we have adequate wind here. It appears there
is adequate wind here, although a test, called a met tower, will be used by a
wind developer.
The other requirement is to be
able to tie into a grid to use the electricity produced by the wind turbines.
Other companies in surrounding counties have done this and Cleveland does not
anticipate a problem on that score.
“So those won’t be hurdles in getting wind developers in Blackford
County,” Cleveland noted.
More hurdles are from outside sources.
“While there is real possibility of wind development in Blackford
County, there are a number of hurdles that we face in the coming years. From a
national standpoint, there is a concern that the federal subsidies will cease
to exist after 2012,” Cleveland explained.
The conference ingrained on him that 56 cents of every $1 of capital
investment goes back to the wind company, Cleveland said. The day a company
finishes, it can file for a 30 percent cash credit on its investment. It then
gets 26 percent back in accelerated depreciation over the next five years.
Such policies spur development. On the flip side, if the federal
government no longer provides those incentives, the companies won’t be so quick
to make investments, Cleveland warned.
For example, it now costs 7-8 cents per kilowatt-hour to produce
electricity but local residents pay only about 3-4 cents per kw hour. “So
without the subsidies it would be difficult to do it,” he said.
Development could also be stunted without a state requirement to force
power companies to get a percentage of its power from renewable sources.
“From a state standpoint, without a RES (Renewable Energy Standard),
there will be limited development. A RES allows the state to mandate a certain
percentage of electricity come from renewable sources,” Cleveland said.
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