In late August, the federal government announced half a billion dollars in grants to help develop wind-energy projects. This is good news for northern Colorado ranch and farm owners that have land ripe for wind farm development. Some wind farms, such as the Cedar Creek Wind Farm located east of Grover, have already taken shape. The Cedar Creek farm has 274 turbines making it one of the largest wind-powered facilities in the country. Colorado State University has their own project in the works called the Green Power Project. This development, just north of Fort Collins on I-25, has the potential to produce four gigawatts of wind energy.
The rise of the wind energy market has naturally led to a change in property appraisals for some properties. On some appraisals you will see a new line item: “Annual turbine lease revenues on top of crop revenue yield per acre.” These are properties that have wind speeds of 11-13 miles per hour and are ideally in the general vicinity of existing high-power electrical transmission lines and not too remote from population centers.