Information for Landowners

Global Winds Harvest is always interested in evaluating development opportunities. If you are wondering about the wind power potential of your land, please feel free to contact us. The following factors are important for determining whether your land might be part of a viable wind power project: 

1.    Wind Resource  – as a rule of thumb, wind speeds of at least 17 mph are typically required to generate sufficient power to make a wind power project economically viable.  

2.   Interconnection/ Transmission  – because the costs of transporting power to the electrical grid are high, project viability typically requires that existing transmission lines be within at least 5-10 miles of the wind resource area. 

3.    Land Area – to avoid excessive power losses from turbulence, large wind turbines are typically spaced ~1000-2000 ft apart. On average, this results in a total wind farm land area of approximately 60-100 acres per turbine.  

Other important considerations include the need to minimize environmental constraints (e.g., avoiding sensitive ecological resources, public airports, high-density residential areas, etc.), the availability of potential power buyers (i.e., being near a good market), and transportation accessibility (i.e., the ability to safely and economically move turbines and cranes to the project area). Although every project is different, most successful development attempts will include a favorable combination of all these factors. 

For lands that meet some or most of these favorable criteria, the typical course of development is fairly predictable.

Early Development – during this first phase, land is secured by negotiating leases or lease options with our partner landowners, meteorological data is collected, and feasibility for interconnection to the electrical grid is evaluated. 

Mid-stage Development – having determined that the project appears economically viable, this phase of development largely involves evaluating the potential environmental impacts of the project and the possibility for their mitigation, conducting electrical grid interconnection studies and securing the necessary local, state, and federal permits required to build the project. This can be an expensive and time-consuming process if the location has not been well selected from the start.  

Late-stage Development – once the necessary permits and the rights to interconnect to the electrical grid have been secured, the final stage of development is focused on ensuring that all legal issues with the leased properities are in order, finalizing the precise layout of turbines and other project components (substation, electrical collection system, permanent meteorological towers, etc.), engineering the construction of these components and planning the logistics of component transport and construction.