Utility companies offer Floyd County their insight on wind power project development

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Representatives of the largest utility companies in Iowa gave Floyd County officials and area residents detailed overviews at a meeting this week of how their organizations develop wind energy projects, why they are built where they are, and what considerations and regulations are taken into account.

The meeting held Monday night at the Fossil and Prairie Park Preserve Center near Rockford was one of several listening posts intended to both gather and to disseminate information about wind turbines and wind projects.

The public meetings are part of the process the Floyd County Planning and Zoning Commission and Board of Supervisors are going through to revise the county’s zoning ordinance regarding commercial-size wind farms. Two companies, Invenergy and NextEra, have proposed constructing new wind farms in the county.

John Robbins, a community planner with the North Iowa Area Council of Governments (NIACOG), has been working with Floyd County to develop the new wind power ordinance, and he introduced the speakers.

“We put this workshop together to educate our board and commission and the public about the process of developing a wind farm and various topics that are involved with wind farm regulation and their impacts,” Robbins said, adding that neither of the companies who had speakers at the meeting currently has a project in development in Floyd County.

Will Dougherty, a project developer for MidAmerican, said that before construction can begin on a wind farm, years of work and dozens of studies must be performed in order to obtain all applicable permits and approvals.

Environmental studies include eagle and large bird use surveys, small bird use surveys, a raptor nest search, bat surveys, a rare species screening report, a site characterization report, wetland surveys and a cultural and historical survey, Dougherty said.

Technical studies include a multiple-year wind resource study, microwave beam path study, aviation study, sound and shadow studies, a wake-loss study, geotechnical study and site optimization study.

The site locations are also studied by the regional transmission system operator MISO – the Midcontinent Independent System Operator – which looks at dozens of project applications going at the same time to determine how each one could fit into the system and what, if any, system upgrades are needed for the project to come online.

Dougherty also listed the government agencies involved in development, including county board of supervisors, county zoning, county engineer’s office, conservation board, county board of health, county sheriff and local EMS, fire and rescue.

State agencies include the Iowa Utilities Board, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Iowa Department of Transportation and the Iowa State Archeologist Office.

Federal agencies include the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the National Weather Service.

Justin Foss, a senior project manager with Alliant Energy, also talked about the many studies that must be done and the permits and permissions that must be received before a wind farm can be constructed.

He showed a map of a wind farm Alliant had developed, with tens of thousands of acres of land that landowners had voluntarily contracted to provide easements to. But when all the areas where there was a reason not to build a turbine are removed, the number of areas left is pretty restricted.

“We had all of that land, but there were only so many areas that we could go because, if you look here for example, we’ve got bat habitat right here. So we’re out of there. Over here you’ve got a different prairie that we had to stay away from. The yellow (area on the map) – bald eagle nest, so we set back from that,” he said.

“All of a sudden you take the area and you shrink it down and truthfully, it gets hard to find enough spots to put a wind turbine, and that’s why sometimes when you hear the vast numbers of how many acres does this wind farm span – it can be in the 30-, 40-, 50,000 acres – but it’s not, because a lot of that land is ineligible, disqualified,” Foss said.

“So when you think about an ordinance for Floyd County, as you heard from Will, there are many agencies that it is their job to make sure to protect the environment, make sure to protect the power grid, make sure to protect other things,” Foss said.

“Your ordinances don’t need to talk about protecting eagles because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is doing that. Your ordinances don’t need to talk about protecting the power grid, because FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is doing that,” he said.

“So yours is really about what’s the quality of life in the community. And that’s where you’ve got to find the balance,” Foss said.

Both utility representatives talked about why so many wind farms are located in Iowa – because it is one of the highest wind resource areas in the country, and also has the open areas where turbines can be built without significantly disrupting other uses.

Although different forms of renewable energy production are located everywhere, the heaviest concentrations are where they work best – wind in the Midwest, solar in the South, hydroelectric in the West, they said.

Foss said Alliant’s goal of moving toward renewable energy is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, cutting them by 50% by 2030, eliminating the use of coal in generators by 2040 and reaching an “aspirational goal” of “net-zero” CO2 emissions by 2050 for the electricity Alliant generates.

“I can’t predict the future, but what I can do is say today the best options that we have involve a lot of renewable energy for our customers and for our state,” Foss said.

Dougherty said MidAmerican has more than 7,500 megawatts of wind capacity – enough to power more than 2.3 million average Iowa households – being generated by more than 3,400 wind turbines.

It’s latest wind operation is the Chickasaw County Wind Energy Center, which was constructed by Invenergy and sold to MidAmerican last summer.

In 2022, MidAmerican generated enough electricity from renewable resources to provide power to 100% of its customers in Iowa, Dougherty said, although not all of that energy was used in Iowa.

Dougherty also said that wind generation technology continues to improve, with lighter and stronger materials, more efficient electrical generators and better management of the turbine operation.

As turbines have become larger and more efficient, fewer of them are needed in a project to generate the desired amount of power, he said.

The Floyd County Board of Supervisors last year passed a moratorium on accepting applications or issuing permits for new commercial wind energy projects until May 20 this year, with the potential for that to be extended to July 1.

The expectation is that a proposed new wind energy zoning ordinance will be put together by the Planning and Zoning Commission and recommended to the supervisors by that time.

Both of the companies looking to develop new wind farms in Floyd County – NextEra and Invenergy – are still allowed to work with county landowners on easement agreements while the moratorium is in place.

Two additional public listening sessions – these specifically for people to provide their own comments and ask questions – have been set.

The first is Monday, Feb. 12, at 6 p.m. at the Fossil and Prairie Park Preserve Center, and the second is Wednesday, Feb. 21, at 6 p.m. in the EOC room in the atrium between the county courthouse and the Law Enforcement center.