A proposed wind farm in southeastern South Dakota has enough money to jumpstart major development. The Dakota Power Community Wind project has more than $1.5 million for the Lincoln County venture. That puts project leaders on track for additional analysis and planning.
More than 110 investors from across South Dakota are putting their money on a wind farm planned for 24,000 acres of land between Canton and Beresford.
Nick Sershen is a consultant for Dakota Power Community Wind. He says hitting the initial investment milestone of $1.5 million means leaders can move forward with bird counts, wind analysis, and turbine mapping.
"With the avian studies, there’s actually going to be people driving around the county counting birds and looking at some of those preliminary data points, and we’ll be putting up a couple more meteorological towers to accurately measure and predict the wind speed," Sershen says.
Sershen says main construction on the wind farm is likely to start in a couple of years. He says the wind project can generate tax revenue for communities. He says local school districts could receive $750,000 to $1 million in tax dollars each year from a full-scale wind farm.
Leaders say their project’s success could bring more opportunities for wind power development. Wind farm leaders plan to sell power generated in Lincoln County though a proposed line that supplies energy to Chicago and cities along the east coast. Sershen says that connection opens up the market for more wind farms in South Dakota.
"The issue in South Dakota right now is there’s limited transmission to get power out to the people that need it. We have a lot of wind here, but we don’t have a lot of people that use power. So we need to ship off power out – just like we do with corn and beans – we ship it out to places that use it, so Dakota Power getting on the Rock Island Clean Line opens places farther west to get things closer to transmission; that gets potentially more of the state for wind development, which could be a great way to tap into that natural resource we have here," Sershen says.
Dakota Power is accepting additional South Dakota investors through the end of the year. They’ll stop investments then or when people have invested a total of $4 million. For additional information on the Lincoln County wind farm project, visit this link.