Winds of Change

It's time for a road trip to Woodstock. Only unlike the thousands of young people who flocked to Max Yasgur's pasture in upstate New York for a festival fueled by music and drugs back in August of 1969, the southwestern Minnesota farmland I am visiting in August of 2009 is powered by wind.

And what a power it is. While it is completely calm when I stop for gas in Marshall, by the time I drive a few miles out of town on Highway 23 a somewhat startling sight makes me acutely aware that a steady breeze is blowing.
After passing mile after mile of verdant fields and family farms that take on a certain sameness, the horizon is suddenly interrupted by a different view; dozens of wind turbines of varying sizes lining a ridge, some as tall as 40 stories, but all steadily spinning as the wind turns the blades, which spin a shaft, which connects to a generator and makes electricity. In fact, in just three counties alone-Pipestone, Lincoln and Murray-some 1,200 machines generate 1,000 megawatts, or about $100 million worth of electricity every year.

"This is the biggest opportunity for rural economic development since the invention of the tractor."

That voice-and quote-belong to Dan Juhl, wind warrior, renewable energy pioneer, Chairman and CEO of Juhl Wind, Inc. He is the reason I have ventured to Woodstock and I find him about a mile outside of town, working in a modest prairie-side office building that has its own water supply, electricity, cooling and heating. With his homemade electric car sitting outside to get him back and forth from his farm a mile or so down the road, Juhl is a guy who is living divorced from the grid, but he is also a successful entrepreneur.

"It is becoming easier to be both profitable and do the right thing," says the easygoing and casual Juhl, who never looks at his watch once during our interview, despite the fact I have showed up over an hour late for it. "Wind power and renewables are becoming socially acceptable and even desired. We struggled for a lot of years though."

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Indeed. Before we go too much further into the future of wind power in this state, we should give you the back story on Juhl's original involvement with wind. It's all a bit serendipitous.

"It was the '70s and I had been making a living as a musician and was up in Alaska taking a break from the road," says Juhl with a smile, despite the fact he has probably recited the story hundreds of times. "I was giving guitar lessons to a young guy up there whose dad was buying and selling these old Jacobs wind machines that powered the Midwest back in the '30s and '40s. He found out I had an electronics background from a stint in the Navy and asked if I wanted to help put up one of these machines. In the process of hooking it up I crossed some wires and it knocked me right on my backside. I thought, wow, there's something there!"

Intrigued, Juhl came down to the lower 48 and started work on his own wind machines, forming a company in Kennedy, Minnesota, in 1978. Through that process he met Erik Grove-Nielsen, an early wind turbine blade pioneer from Denmark, the number one wind producing country on the planet.

"His blade/rotor design came to be the dominant in the world and was the heart of all the Danish machines in the early '80s," Juhl says, further noting that nearly all the world's larger wind machines were built by the Danes. "So I became affiliated with them though my wind turbines that I was designing and building for use with farms and small businesses. When the California wind farms began exploding, Erik's company was bought out by a bigger entity and then they bought my business and hired me as a technical liaison."

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That's when Juhl saYS his wind education began in earnest. He was not only able to get firsthand views of the technology of the blade manufacturers, but he also was able to see the philosophical side of wind. Specifically, he says, he saw how the European wind farms are controlled by the people who live on-and own- the land. That view formed the basis of the community wind farm model Juhl champions today.

"I put up three machines in the Stoney Ridge area that basically became the first wind farm outside of California. They became some of the highest producing machines in the world so I knew this was a good spot for wind. I also began concurrent work on policy to make wind power a little more economically palatable. I knew we had to address hurdles such as property tax and sales tax and we also tried to bring the value of clean energy into the legislative mechanism as well."

Juhl says on a micro level he is working with lawmakers to help change the tax code so that ordinary taxpayers can have the opportunity to use tax credits and make their own investments in wind energy. He says it would allow ordinary Minnesotans and Americans to invest in their own energy future right where they live.

And coincidentally, literally as I am working on this story, a local TV station airs a piece about two neighbors who live along the St.Croix River who invested thousands to erect a wind machine on their property.   

"Who owns this resource?" asks Juhl, and then proceeds to answer the question. "It's the people who live on the land. They are beginning to recognize it's possible to convert this untapped resource to a salable commodity."

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Who actually receives the money for the commodity, though, is at the heart of what Dan Juhl is working on from a macro level. Remember those 1,200 wind machines we mentioned in that area of the state known as Buffalo Ridge? Juhl says every dollar of energy they generate leaves the state and in some cases the country.

"That means $100 million of our electrical dollars that you and I spend every year with Northern States Power is gone to Florida and even to France and Spain and to these big, foreign multi-nationals who own most of the Minnesota wind machines," according to Juhl, who can really get wound up talking about this part of the wind equation. "This isn't just about energy and the environment, it's also about the economy. Wind represents a huge opportunity as an economic development tool and it could literally save some of these small, agriculture-based communities that have been steadily dying. It's completely in the hands of the utilities and the funny thing about it is the cooperatives seem to be the hardest ones to convince that they should do community-based development. They don't have virtually anything to do with the folks that live in their own area even though we try and we try. They'll fight a farmer tooth and nail to put up one wind turbine. I don't get it. We've been trying to get the legislature involved in understanding it. Politics is energy and energy is politics and it can get kind of ugly."

Minnesota has actually been a leader when it comes to renewable energy standards. A bill signed by Governor Pawlenty requires energy companies to provide 25 percent of power from renewable sources by the year 2025. Xcel Energy, which supplies approximately half of the electricity in the state, is required to provide 30 percent from renewable sources by 2020. (See sidebar)

Juhl says the gap between that goal and today's annual Minnesota wind output represents about 4,000 megawatts, with an economic activity potential of about $8 billion. He also says that if those new wind machines belong to Minnesotans, that could represent about $400 to $500 million energy dollars that stay in the state every year.

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Of course raising capital for expansion and new business projects these days is difficult, even with the added help of renewables receiving substantial attention, as well as federal stimulus dollars. Juhl Wind is trying to find about $100 million for some new wind farms, and they recently added retired Army general and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark to the board of directors to help with that endeavor.

"He found us," says Juhl, in response to my obvious question. "We got a phone call one day from some folks in New York who are involved with General Clark and they said he wanted to talk with us. That caught us a little off guard down here in Woodstock, even though we had heard that he became involved in renewables. He told us he thinks what we are doing with community wind development is vital to our national security and he is really behind it. He has come out here to spend time with us at the office and on my farm, and he is a real asset and a great partner. When someone of that stature wants to hold your hand it increases your visibility a lot."

Visibility is important. However, Juhl says wind is the cheapest, least volatile form of energy we have, and he is looking forward to the day when everyone from lawmakers to the energy companies gives it the respect he feels it deserves.

"I think we have reached the point where we have a convergence of philosophy and technology. We know we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuel, we know we can't keep fighting for oil in the Persian Gulf we know we are having some climate changes and we need to do something, right? The critical factor, though, is we now have the technology to be able to make this a reality. It's all coming together. We can do the right thing and be clean and also be quite profitable. Our future looks great." MB

BizBrief
Juhl Wind, Inc.
Headquarters: Woodstock, MN

Inception: 1989

Revenue: $12M

Description: Full service renewable energy company focusing on community-based wind development and management

Management Team
Dan Juhl: Chairman/CEO

John Mitola: President

John Brand: Chief Financial Officer

Mike Michaud: Vice President, Engineering

Corey Juhl: Vice President, Project Development

Tyler Juhl: Vice President, Project Development

Jeff Bendel: Vice President, Project Development: 

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