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Community wind can be a winner for UK’s local utilities

Why Community Wind Should Be Part of a Utility’s Portfolio, Renewable Energy World, By Cynthia Crooks, February 16, 2011 The clock is ticking. The production tax credit for renewable energy is set to expire at the end of 2012, which means that to take advantage of the incentive a project has to be “commercially operable” by that time. Since it can take two years or longer for a wind farm to be up and running, utilities that don’t already have a project in development should be thinking about initiating one, and fast. But in their rush, utilities should not overlook the additional benefits in speed and local good will that can be had through Community Wind.

Now, there are a number of good reasons why wind energy should be part of a power utility’s portfolio – there are various incentives and mandates from both the Federal and local governments, there is the freedom from fuel-cost volatility – and those are generally well known.  But what many utility executives don’t know is that there are additional advantages that can be had by paying attention to the business model behind the wind farm.  In particular, by making use of a relatively new approach to wind energy called Community Wind.

The Community Wind model is based on a distributed network of smaller-scale wind farms (generally between 5 and 100MW) that are at least in-part, locally owned.  It’s been around for decades in Europe and for a few years in the U.S….

February 18, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | decentralised, UK