What is Community Wind?
“Community Wind”, according to WINDUSTRY.org, is a wind project that is a community-owned asset. Community wind projects are owned by a variety of individuals including local small business owners, farmers, local organizations including schools and universities, as well as Native American Tribes, rural electric cooperatives, municipal utilities, and religious institutions. These project can range from a single turbine to a community-owned commercial-scale wind farm.
This is “distributed generation”. There are a number of financing arrangements that allow investors with an appetite for tax advantages to link up with a not-for-profit or municipality to co-own the assets. There are ways to share the revenue produced by the wind systems.
There are wind-cooperative models, also, which may include local ownership of the Community Wind project.
Farms, universities, churches, schools and municipalities may be members or a Community Wind or Cooperative Wind project.
A good example of a “Community” wind project is the 100 kW wind turbine at Appalachian State University (Boone, NC). Part of the cost of the power production asset was paid by students.
We are not aware of any “Community Wind” projects in Maryland at this time. But, if your municipality, community, homeowners association or cooperative may be considering a Community Wind project, please let us know about it at: