Central Montana Times

The state utility regulator has set contract terms for a $500 million wind farm in Stillwater County.

Caithness Beaver Creek, headquartered in New York City, hopes to build four 80-megawatt wind farms near Rapelje. It has become an area favored by renewable energy companies with several projects currently in various stages of development.

After Caithness and NorthWestern Energy failed to agree on terms for the sale of power, last week Montana’s Public Service Commission stepped in to provide guidance on pricing.

Roger Koopman, the public service commissioner for the area where the wind farm would be located, told the Billings Gazette he is pleased about the potential of the Caithness Beaver Creek. It would be the state’s only renewable energy project to feature battery storage, allowing power to still be produced when winds fail to do the job.

“It’s the single most important, cutting-edge (renewable energy) decision the commission has yet made during my tenure, owing to its very unique and cutting-edge design,” Koopman told the Billings Gazette.

Several pricing aspects still need to be agreed on before the project would move forward. Still, officials in Stillwater County expressed optimism about the benefits Caithness Beaver Creek would create, including roughly $4 million annually in taxes. Caithness would also provide impact fees due to extensive road use during construction, which could also be distributed to affected schools, Tyrel Hamilton, Stillwater County commissioner, told the newspaper.

The nearby Stillwater Wind Farm has disbursed impact fees that not only helped maintain roads but also covered a new classroom, Hamilton said. The money is vitally important to the rural area, which has relatively few taxpayers and farm land with low taxable values.

“We’re allowed statutorily by the state to give some of that money to affected schools, and in the case of Stillwater Wind the county supplied Reed Point School District with a little over $300,000-plus,” Hamilton was quoted in the story. “That allowed them to build an elementary wing next to their high school.”