Jun. 16--We Energies plans to own and develop two wind farms in Fond du Lac County after the company bought rights to the projects from Navitas Energy Inc. of Minneapolis.
In a deal announced Wednesday, We Energies paid for the engineering, leases and permits for two 80-megawatt projects, the Blue Sky wind farm in the town of Calumet and Green Field wind farm in the town of Marshfield. The adjacent projects are in northeastern Fond du Lac County.

The deal means the Milwaukee-based utility would be responsible for spending roughly $220 million to $250 million to build the two wind farms.

The purchase price was not disclosed.

"It's relatively small, as compared to the total investment that would be made in the facilities," said Rick Kuester, executive vice president of Wisconsin Energy Corp., the parent company of We Energies.

The company and Navitas had signed a deal in July 2003 calling for Navitas to build the wind projects and sell the electricity generated by the wind farms to We Energies. The original deal called for the projects to be online by the end of last year.

Several factors contributed to a delay in building the project, including the passage of a federal tax credit for wind energy production. Higher steel prices and the declining value of the dollar relative to the euro also played a role in delaying the project, Navitas officials said earlier this year.

Exchange rates have had an impact on wind-power projects because wind turbines are imported from Europe.

Navitas said earlier this year that it would not begin construction of the project this year, and the company recently offered to sell the wind farms to We Energies.

"It was just moving slower than what we wanted it to move," he said. "We decided in the best interest of our customers to go ahead and move ahead and buy it and really control our own destiny with it," Kuester said.

The company was banking on these projects, plus a smaller wind farm proposed for Dodge County, as part of an expanded commitment to renewable energy. Wisconsin Energy now operates two wind turbines in Fond du Lac County, and buys power from a wind farm near Dodgeville.

The utility wants to have about 5 percent of its electricity supply from renewable power sources by 2011, which would translate to 320 megawatts of power, Kuester said.

We Energies plans to apply for permits for the Fond du Lac wind farm projects with an eye toward building them and having them generating power in 2007, Kuester said.

If built as a single project, the farm would become the second largest utility-owned wind-power project in the nation, said Michael Vickerman, executive director of the renewable energy advocacy group RENEW Wisconsin.

"We Energies' commitment to build and operate a wind farm of this magnitude is a powerful demonstration that the economics of wind power are too good to pass up," Vickerman said.

Wisconsin Energy also bought the development rights for a third site named Lake Breeze Wind Farm, although there are no current development plans for the site, Kuester said. That site is located in the town of Taycheedah, also in Fond du Lac County.

The Navitas purchase comes at a time when the state is encouraging development of renewable power. A task force appointed by Gov. Jim Doyle last year recommended that Wisconsin buy 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within 10 years.

The project was conceived of as two 44-turbine projects, with each capable of producing 1.8 megawatts of electricity, but newer technology in the wind-power industry features even larger turbines, generating 2 to 2.5 megawatts each.

The 5 percent commitment was part of the company's overall new-power plant construction planning, which also includes the new Port Washington natural gas-fired power plants under construction in Port Washington and two new coal-fired power plants that We Energies wants to build in Oak Creek.

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Publication date: 2005-06-16