Community wind – where smaller turbines and wind projects provide electricity to a local town or city – has served as a test bed for ways to finance wind projects.
Last year, a handful of community wind projects were financed using new, creative structures that push the envelope of wind project finance in the U.S.
Projects include:
1) a 4.5 MW project in Maine that combines low-cost government debt with local tax equity,
2) a 25.3 MW project in Minnesota using a sale/leaseback structure,
3) a 10.5 MW project in South Dakota financed by an intrastate offering of both debt and equity,
4) a 6 MW project in Washington state that taps into New Markets Tax Credits using an "inverted" or "pass-through" lease structure, and
5) a 9 MW project in Oregon that combines a variety of state and federal incentives and loans with unconventional equity from high-net-worth individuals.
To learn more, read the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab report, "Community Wind: Once Again Pushing the Envelope of Project Finance." It describes these financing structures in some detail.
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