Legalectric

Invenergy has sold Freeborn Wind, LLC, to Xcel Energy, well, Northern States Power Company – Minnesota. Sooooo, now they’ve asked the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to approve the acquisition.

On or about June 14, the day of closing, Invenergy, the developer/old owner, TERMINATED 34 leases and good neighbor agreements covering over 4,470 acres of land.

What does that mean? Well, the project, and project approval, was based on 17,435 acres of leased land, and 4,470 is over 25% of the leased land. In the contested case, it was questionable whether the project had enough land, and there’s even a notation that Invenergy was working on acquiring more land, and we were told over and over again that there wasn’t enough room to make any adjustments, to move any turbines even a little bit! So now, at 75%, can they even build this?

Meanwhile, Xcel/NSPM has said they’ll be requesting a permit amendment, because they’ll be changing 32 Vesta V116 to Vesta V120, larger turbines, longer blades (needing larger 3 and 5RD setbacks) and longer blades equals more noise. They’ve said they’ll file new noise study, shadow flicker, and site plan.

In short, the project permitted December 19, 2018 and May 10, 2019, is not the same project.

Now this is NOT the same project… there are substantive, material changes… PUC doesn’t seem to care, Commerce doesn’t seem to care…

Association of Freeborn County Landowners is trying to wake up the Commission:

Xcel/NSPM has asked for approval of the acquisition, and the Commission announced a comment period, so here we go:

And read EERA’s Comment — good grief, blinders on the wrong end of the horse:

PUC will take a look at this sometime soon, but likely the NSPM amendment request will come in, IF they file it as planned, before that, as they expected to file in July. We shall see.