(Estherville)– Plans are in the works for another major wind farm in the area.
Al Blum of Estherville today (Tuesday) announced the formation of a local investor group that will oversee the formation of the “NorthStar Wind Farm” to be built on 30 square miles northwest of Estherville on either side of the border between Emmet and Dickinson counties.
Blum says the new LLC has filed with the Midwest Independent Service Organization for transmission interconnection and has completed two phases of a wind analysis.
He says the first phase of the project will consist of 32 turbines at an estimated cost of 120 million dollars. Blum says local investors have partnered with Outland Renewable Energy LLC…a regional firm that invests in landowner wind farms. In addition to Blum, the newly elected board of directors includes local landowners Richard Bockman and Paul Love along with two board members from Outland Renewable.
Developers of the project are Jack Levi and Patrick Pelstring of Wind Energy Developers…a Minneapolis-based developer that specializes in “utility scale” wind farms. The Estherville Development Corporation has assisted in getting developers hooked up with local investors.
Blum says NorthStar Wind is partnering with the Wind Energy Program at Iowa Lakes Community College, which has erected an anemometer north of Superior to measure wind speed, direction and ambient air temperature. He says a second anemometer will be going up in the next couple of weeks.
Blum says they held their first meeting with local landowners a couple weeks ago and was very pleased with the response they got.
Representatives of NorthStar Wind met today (Tuesday) with the Emmet county board of supervisors. They’re scheduled to meet with Dickinson county supervisors sometime in the next couple of weeks.
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