February 6, 2013
New Hampshire

Wind farm pays county bill in full

By Jake Mardin | The News and Sentinel | February 6, 2013 | www.colbsent.com

One day before the February 1 deadline, the owners of the 33-turbine wind farm in Dixville and Millsfield have paid the remainder of their 2013 Payment in Lieu of Taxes.

County administrator Jennifer Fish gave the news to the Coös Delegation, which gathered for its quarterly meeting in Lancaster on Monday. The full PILOT agreement was for $495,000, and as of January 31, Brookfield Renewable Power had paid only $249,175, or about half of the total payment.

Last week, a Brookfield spokesman said that the company believed “that the payment due under the PILOT framework is directly tied to the amount of electricity that [the wind park] is permitted to produce. Unfortunately, the project has been curtailed at various times in 2012 at the direction of ISO-New England, [and] as a result, our ability to generate electricity, revenue and therefore payments from the wind farm were limited.”

According to a press release handed out at Monday’s meeting, the county commissioners disagreed with that conclusion, stating the 2009 agreement stipulated that Brookfield could not reduce its payment. On January 31, a day before the deadline, the county received a notice of a wire transfer of $245,825 into its account.

“The commissioners were very pleased with this news,” Ms. Fish said. “We continue to work closely with Brookfield Power on other issues, including the establishment of a decommissioning fund, which will be needed if the wind park ever ceases operations.”

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/02/06/wind-farm-pays-county-bill-in-full/