The United States produces more electricity from wind power than any other country in the world. The vast majority of installations are located in three large wind development regions in California. Stimulated by state and federal government policy to accelerate the development of wind energy, most projects were structured to take maximum advantage of the concentrated wind resource, the close proximity of high wind sites to major population centers, and economies of scale. The results were large, corporately-owned windfarms with many turbines in a single location -- the "California Model." During the 1990s, the wind energy community in the United States has looked to the Great Plains region² for further wind development. Nearly every state in the Great Plains has many times the wind energy capacity of California, and regional, technical, community and political support for wind energy development has grown steadily in the Great Plains over the past fifteen years. For instance, at least one government or utility wind resource assessment program is being conducted in every state. Many states have installations of utility-scale wind turbines, and most states have enacted laws specifically related to wind energy development.

Aggressive government initiatives in at least two states have resulted in the "California model" leading wind development in the Great Plains. In Iowa, for instance, a state law requiring investor­owned utilities to invest heavily in renewable energy was re­affirmed by the Iowa Utilities Board in August 1996. Utilities were ordered to have at least 105 "full capacity" megawatts³ under contract within six months. In Minnesota, Northern States Power (NSP), the largest utility in the state, was pressured by the Department of Public Service in 1991 to build a "large" wind project. NSP responded by contracting for power from a 73-turbine, 25 MW wind power plant (NSP Phase I) built by Kenetech. The plant went on line just southeast of Lake Benton, Minnesota, along the Buffalo Ridge, in May 1994. At the time, it was the largest wind power plant in the U.S. outside the state of California.⁴

Many in the state were thrilled that major wind power development had begun in Minnesota. While local residents, public officials and community development specialists agreed that wind development is good for the environment, many questioned whether it benefitted local economic development. In evaluating the large-scale project, they observed that

• siting was conducted by out-of-state specialists;
• turbines and blades were manufactured on the West Coast;
• towers were built in Texas;
• the construction crew from Texas hired few local workers;
• the plant was operated remotely from a control center near San Francisco;
• investment capital came from outside the state; and
• local units of government received no tax revenue to cover the additional administrative and road maintenance costs incurred by the local government. (The state exempted wind energy from local property taxes in 1992 to stimulate wind energy development.)

In response to their experience with the NSP Phase I project, and expecting similar experiences with even larger NSP projects, local officials and others called for an examination of other wind energy development models that would provide more benefits to the local community.

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