(Estherville)—The board of directors of Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative has voted to return a $300,000 margin rebate to its member-owners. Coop officials say it’s the result of record-setting margins returned through its wind turbines. They say the cooperative’s two wind farms exceeded 2012 production estimates by 7 million kilowatt hours…a 10 percent increase over projected generation totals.
Officials say the $300,000 margin rebate was calculated after the cooperative deferred $700,000 to help mitigate future replacement of aging or defective equipment such as gearboxes, blades and gears.
The cooperative says this is the first wind margin rebate it’s made to its members since it started wind energy production back in March, 2009.
Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative serves over 12,000 member-owned accounts in Buena Vista, Cherokee, Clay, Dickinson, Emmet, Kossuth, Palo Alto and Pocahontas counties.
