Buzz,
A very good friend of mine owns a crane repair business in California, where I'm from. He had the contract to maintain the cranes used to maintain the windfarm in the Livermore hills of California. At one time, one of the bigger wind farms around.
I don't know anything about the owners of the land or how it affected them, just what he told me about it.
The windmills require huge amounts of maintenance. They had a crew working full time greasing and repairing them by drivng from one to the other with a guy up in the bucket. They never lowered it and the strain and damage on the boom kept my buddy busy.
According to him, the windmills never generated a proffit because of all the expenses in maintaining them. They were built for tax credits and government grants and have changed ownership several times.
Now they mostly sit abandonded and have even started to fall down from neglect!!!
My concern is two fold. First, they ruin the value of your land. If I could afford your land, I would not buy it because of the windmills. I have bought as much as 300 acres before and have walked away from a deal on 400 acres because of visually ugly features on the land along with the easments associated with the land. I buy land on ocassion as an investment and expect to sell it at a profit, so that would be a huge red flag for me.
The other issue would be as a landowner. How much impact would constant maintenance affect your pasture? Roads will have to be built through the area to service each windmill. How sure are you that they will make a profit and you will actualy get something in return?
They could be going in as a government feel good tax thing like in California and never actually make a profit. If that happens, you won't see a dime, but the company who puts them in gets all sorts of tax credits for spending the money to put them there.
If it doesn't work our, or they go bankrupt, how do you get rid of them?
In my opinion, and it's just that, I'd find another way to make some money off the land that you have more control over. Let the other guy take the gamble. If it in fact turns out to be a money makeing operation, they will want to put more in and you'll still have the land.
Good luck,
Eddie
