Tallest towers to turn

• Turbines

Brian Korthals/Daily Globe Fifteen 480-foot-tall wind turbines are being erected west of Reading as part of the 30-megawatt Community Wind South project.

Talk about it

WORTHINGTON — In a little less than three weeks, juwi Wind and local investors will celebrate the completion of Nobles County’s newest and tallest wind farm, Community Wind South, with a 3 p.m. Dec. 5 ribbon cutting ceremony and a proverbial flip of the switch on the $70 million project.

Nine of the 15 turbines are already complete. Workers are doing assembly overnight this week, when there is little wind to hamper their efforts.

“We’re trying to put up a wind farm where it’s windy,” said Aaron Peterson, community relations and regulatory affairs manager for juwi (pronounced u-v) Wind. “When the wind is going down, we’re on call.”

As such, crews have been going out after dark and working until about 5 a.m. this week. Not only is southwest Minnesota’s constant wind slowing progress, the “humungous crane” used to erect the turbines also takes a considerable amount of time to move from one location to the next. That, of course, was something juwi factored into its timeline.

The REpower towers will be the largest in the state at 480 feet to the top of the blade. Each turbine has a blade sweep of 1.6 acres, meaning the 15-tower farm will harvest 25 acres of wind. The towers are also projected to harvest 15 percent more power than the traditional 80-meter towers that surround it.

“It’s rather rare still,” said Peterson of the taller towers being erected.

“The taller the tower, the longer the blade, the slower it turns,” added Community Wind South board member Jerry Perkins.

Nacelles for each 2-megawatt turbine came direct from Germany, while the blades were manufactured in Arkansas and the towers produced in West Fargo, N.D. Each tower base was constructed of 60 truckloads of concrete, and a total of 95,000 pounds of rerod was used in the project.

Construction of the wind farm began in June by cutting ground trenches, with the bases built throughout June, July and August. The first tower was completed by early October.

“It has been a long process,” said David Benson, chair of the Community Wind South board, of the more than nine years it has taken to reach this point. The group was granted authority to move forward with the project on March 11, 2003, by the state’s Public Utilities Commission.

“It’s good to see it coming together,” Benson added. “This wouldn’t have happened without Minwind (a wind farm near Beaver Creek) and Mark Willers.”

“It’s been quite a journey,” said Perkins, adding that the economy, availability of parts and access to financing were all hurdles that “make this whole thing coming to fruition savory.”

Community Wind South has approximately 30 investors, including each of the board members, those hosting towers on their land and individuals living along the transmission line who wished to participate. The project was made possible because of Xcel Energy’s need for more transmission lines. Through work by the Minnesota Rural Energy Board, legislation was established requiring that 60 megawatts of the 825-megawatt Xcel project had to be community-based projects. From that requirement grew Community Wind South in Nobles County and Community Wind North, at Lake Benton.

The Community Wind South project will lead to four or five permanent jobs in the community. Part-time workers and vendor support people will also be employed.

Investors will benefit from the project as soon as the wind farm is operational, and the county would likely begin collecting revenue from the farm’s wind energy production tax in 2014.

Daily Globe Reporter Julie Buntjer may be reached at 376-7330.

Tags: community wind south, news, ribbon, cutting