Announcing the Wind Farmers Network's first Question and Answer session!

Over the coming months, the Wind Farmers Network will be hosting a series of Question and Answer sessions. This is your opportunity to ask questions to individuals who have expertise in various areas of utility scale wind projects, with an initial focus on community wind projects.

Our first panelist is Keith Bolin, a hog farmer from Illinois. Keith has been instrumental in the installation of a Vestas 660kW turbine at Bureau Valley High School. Bureau Valley will be the first Illinois school district to own and operate a utility scale wind turbine when it is commissioned in December 2004. Real time progress on the turbine installation can be seen on the school's webcam: http://66.99.204.70

Keith has farmed at his present location since 1978. He and his wife, Barbara, have been married for 26 years and have 4 children; David-26, Darcy-21, Dyan-17, Dana-9, and 1 grandson, Nevin Keith Bolin, 9 months. They own and operate the family farm where Keith and his 3 older brothers grew up. They have an outside farrow-to-finish hog operation and raise corn, oats, and alfalfa. He serves as President of the American Corn Growers Associations and as Vice President on the Bureau Valley School Board, is a past President of the Bureau County Young Farmers, and former Church Council President of Trinity Lutheran Church in Manlius, Ill.

Please submit your questions to Keith using this link: info@windfarmersnetwork.org.

We will post both the questions and answers on the forum Tuesday, November 30th.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sarah Johnson,

I received the following clarification from Brian Thomas of Barnhart Crane & Rigging Company:

The crane used was a 500-ton hydraulic all-terrain crane but being a telescopic crane, the maximum lifting capacity was 50,000 pounds. This is due to the fact that the boom configuration required a luffing jib that raised the tip height to over 250'.

His main point is rather than saying "solid boom", a more accurate term would have been telescopic or hydraulic boom or both.

Make sure to check out the pictures of this project:

http://windfarmersnetwork.org/eve/forums?a=albumtopic&s=9131011&topic_oid=3720062192

Here are four of the questions that the members of the Wind Farmers Network sent to Keith Bolin over the Thanksgiving holiday. There was some overlap with other questions we received but we think these cover most of the points that were raised. Keith was kind enough to take a few minutes today in spite of a snow storm heading for Sheffield this afternoon and a long list of tasks waiting to be done.

We will likely get back in touch next spring once the turbine has been in operations for a few months. Thanks for your all time and insight, Keith!

======= Question 1 ==========

Keith I am wanting to do the same thing in Milford Utah at the elementary or High School. Did you deal directly with vestas? Were there major negotiations with the local utility? Did you do an extended study of the site before deciding to put up a turbine. what kind of wind did you find to make the investment feasible? Thanks for sharing info!

Andy Swapp

======= Answer 1 ==========

I did deal directly with Vestas (the wind turbine manufacturer). I met with Jesper Michaelsen at a wind conference in Chicago and got them excited about our project. But, it was our consultant Jay Haley of EAPC Architects and Engineers that did the nuts and bolts works with them. We applied for our first grant in July 2002 and received $20,000 from the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation. We used that money to hire Jay to do our feasibility study. He did an extensive study of our site. We got some wind data from Monmouth College and even more extensive data from the nearby commercial Crescent Ridge wind project. From July ’02 to June ’03 we determined that this was a good project and that we wanted to keep moving forward. That’s when we stated to do some more aggressive fundraising.

At that point, there was still some debate on the size of turbine we were going to use. It came down to the falling value of the dollar (most wind turbine manufacturers are based in Europe), availability of steel, and eventually, which turbine Vestas already had in stock in the U.S. We thought about getting a 750 kW turbine, but since a 660 kW was already in the U.S. it turned out to be a much cheaper option.

We didn’t really negotiate with the local utility (Illinois Power), they’re just paying us their tariff rate. The real value of our project comes from reducing our electricity costs rather than selling the extra power. This was another reason we chose the 660 kW turbine. For us there’s not much advantage in producing much more electricity than we use. The fastest pay back comes from us not consuming $0.08-0.11/kWhr electricity since we can only sell it at $0.03 or so per kilowatt-hour.



======= Question 2 ==========

I understand the process of installing the wind turbine took considerably longer than many people anticipated. I have several questions if that is an accurate understanding. First, knowing what you now know, would you involve yourself in this project again? If yes, what would you do differently? If no, why not? Finally, what single obstacle was greater than you originally anticipated and how would you address that obstacle if you had a fresh start on your project?

Carla Truax

======= Answer 2 ==========

I’m not sure it actually took longer than I anticipated, though sometimes I’m impatient. My wife Barb and I had actually been looking into this since 2000, and it took two years for us to really buy into it ourselves before we could start bringing it to other people. So the project itself actually took about 2 ½ years. I would certainly do all this again and I wouldn’t really change much. We’ve tried to involve the community, politicians and the media; it’s been a very positive experience.

The biggest obstacle is the amount of time it takes to put a project like this together. For a community project, it really takes a person or a group that really believes in it to lead and organize and to spur the professionals on. Somebody has to volunteer to be the leader. Paid professionals usually have other obligations - the superintendent has to focus on educating children, the engineer has other projects. That means a volunteer has to keep everything moving.



======= Question 3 ==========

Mr. Bolin,

Could you provide me with information pertaining to the (all in) costs of the turbine and a break down of expenses? What size crane did you use? How much did it cost?

Thank you

Joe Graham

======= Answer 3 ==========

The project cost totaled about $1,030,000 and came in around $30k-50k over budget. But don’t hold me to those numbers; I’m still in the process of getting the final ones from our engineer, Jay Haley. The main reason for the overage was our legal bill which came to around $70,000, and the interconnect cost for Illinois Power was $60k, or around $20k more than we had budgeted. I am told that the crane we used cost $45k-50k, including the operator, for the week it was onsite. I also found out that if we had used it for an entire month to put up a whole bunch of turbines, the bill would have only come to around $100k, so a big part of the cost is associated with moving it in and out. The crane officially had a 500 ton capacity but because of the way it was set up with a solid boom, the maximum lifting capacity was 50,000 pounds. That worked out fine since the heaviest piece we had was the nacelle that weighed in at about 45,000 pounds.



======= Question 4 ==========

I am very interested in how you were able to plan for and secure funding for the Bureau Valley High School utility scale turbine project. What assumptions did you use to calculate the value that would be gained from power generation and educational experiences for students, faculty and community? What is the expected annual revenue from power generation?

Best Regards,

Paul Baxter

======= Answer 4 ==========

The funding was done in two stages and required a whole lot of meetings with both the grant foundations as well as in Springfield. We originally got a $20k grant from Ed Miller with Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation to do the feasibility study. Once we found there was enough wind to justify the project we got more grants that totaled another $480k from Illinois Clean Energy and the state (Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity). When it came time to find the term lender, Barb and I shopped around for the best rates on the remainder and ended up getting financing for $450k from Union Bank using tax free bonds at a rate of 3.37%. We will still be a bit short and plan to make up the difference from the school's Operations and Maintenance fund.

In terms of the value we receive from the project, we originally figured that the project would gross between $99,000 and $138,000 per year, depending on the turbine we used. I think we ended up using a range of $100,000 to $110,000 since we went with the 660 instead of the 750 kW model. In the end, our decision of which turbine to use came down to whether it was located in the US or if it had to be shipped from Europe since the dollar had dropped so much over that time. The revenue estimates we used included money we didn’t have to spend for power (at the rate of $0.08-0.11/kWhr) since the school is hooked up directly from the turbine. I consider that more of a cost savings, so it gets a bit complicated. Any power that's generated that we don't use will be sold to Illinois Power at the standard tariff which I think is also called the avoided cost. I think works out to around three cents, but I haven't seen those numbers recently. I do know we'll be paying about $50k each year for principal and interest on the loan, which is for a ten year period. After the loan is paid off, the school district will see that much more in the second ten years. All together it comes to revenue/savings of $1.6 million over the term of the project, but that number could go up if power rates increase faster than we estimated or if the turbine lasts longer than the 20 years as we hope it will.