ABOVE: NextEra Energy’s Senior Land Representative RJ Chambers, Land Agent Ken Hallengren and Senior Land Agent Raymond Mead have a discussion after assisting attendees with questions about NextEra’s potential Raider Wind Project in Martin and Jackson counties on Wednesday at Graffiti Corner in Fairmont.

FAIRMONT – Still in the very early stages, NextEra Energy hosted a coffee and chat at Graffiti Corner in Fairmont on Wednesday afternoon to share information and answer questions from local landowners regarding the Raider Wind Windmill Project.

The project would see wind turbines placed on land across Martin and Jackson counties. Preliminary work began in July, with NextEra starting to reach out to landowners about their interest.

It’s pretty early in the process,” Project Manager Matt Johnson said. “Normally, these projects have five to seven to year development processes.”

They first held coffee and chat talks in November, and are looking to host more moving forward. NextEra has sent out hundreds of postcards in the mail to ensure the community knows of this opportunity to learn and potentially get on board.

“It gives an opportunity for landowners as well as community members to come in and ask questions, too,” Johnson said. “It’s very informal, it’s just community members and landowners talking with our team.”

During the last coffee and chat, Johnson said several points of interest came up.

“‘How much land does the turbine base actually take up?'” He said. “‘How are turbines potentially cited?’ Some community members or landowners may want to have further conversations with our team to see what our legal agreements look like, where people sign up voluntarily. It’s a little different because we are so early on the process, where we don’t have as much concrete information.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Johnson said they had around two dozen participants in the first three hours, and were expecting more by the end of the day after dinner. He said they had some pretty standard questions that NextEra representatives were able to answer.

“We’ve had good questions about how and when projects are developed, how they’re decommissioned, what the permanent process looks like,” he said.

While it varies project to project, Johnson said they have an idea of what they are looking to have reserved in order for the project to commence.

“Often these projects have dozens, or depending on the project, 100-plus landowners,” he said. “It’s a fair amount of folks. We have people sign up that maybe have 50 acres or 100 acres, or whatever it is. It can be a fair amount of landowners that are part of a project.”

For those who do give land to the project, NextEra Spokesman Marshall Hastings said the land around the windmill is still usable by the landowner.

“If they have, let’s say a cattle farm, we’ve seen cows walking right up to the base of a wind turbine,” he said. “We’ve seen grow crops being used underneath the wind turbine all the way up to the base as well.”

As for why the Martin and Jackson County areas, Johnson said there are a few reasons this is a particularly good area for a wind energy project.

“For all these projects, we need a few specific things,” he said. “We need access to the electrical grid, which there is in this area, and a good wind resource. We have desktop analysis on the wind resource in the area, obviously very windy. Then we need willing landowners. These are all voluntary landowners that can be part of the project if they want to. They don’t have to be.”

Reaching out to prospective landowners will be the bulk of their work for the next six months or more. If they get enough landowner interest, Johnson said they would move on to the next piece of the puzzle.

“Hopefully, enough land is signed up where we could do various studies,” he said. “The studies can take a while, geotechnical studies and that type of thing. A few years down the road, it would eventually be permitting through the Minnesota PUC.”

For more information, email matt.johnson@nexteraenergy.com or call (608) 705-0554.